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(03/02/05 4:20am)
It was a tough four weeks, but somehow, white people everywhere got through Black History Month. We can now go back to listening to John Denver, watching "Friends" and eating our sandwiches with extra mayo for another year or so.\nBut believe it or not, the media does give due coverage to extraordinary black people like Condoleezza Rice, Morgan Freeman and even IU President Adam Herbert, and I can't remember reading any history book that didn't make it a point to emphasize the accomplishments of minorities.\nThat's why diversity events like Black History Month really rub me the wrong way. There's no such thing as "black history" or "Latino history" or "white history."\nThere is only history, and it's influenced by people of all backgrounds. Some might say that history is written by the victors, but when the victors feel guilty about what they've done to the losers and write the history books to suck up to them, history becomes awfully diverse awfully fast.\nNow, in all fairness, part of the reason there isn't too much positive coverage of minorities is because white people spent a few hundred years keeping them down and only now, a lot of them are getting an equal shot at success. But I would like to think that we're working on correcting that slowly but surely.\nLiberal guilt just isn't the way to go about it. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm rather insulted that every February we have to talk about how much sandwiches would suck if George Washington Carver had never invented peanut butter.\nSure, he invented a lot of other stuff, but that's really the only thing most people remember.\nI mean, do we bring up those things because they're that influential, or just because the people behind them were black? Can anyone name who's responsible for the peanut butter and jelly stuff that's already mixed together in the jar?\nI would go so far as to say Black History Month is pretty racist because it increases racial tensions. \nBy setting a month aside to focus on black accomplishments, it makes it look like only white people do anything noteworthy, so when a black person does something great, it must be an exception to the rule.\nIt also continues to stereotype white people as the oppressors of minorities when I think most of us would just like to leave that nasty slavery business in the past.\nAnd worst of all, it's racist because it continues to point out the differences in people when we should be pointing out the similarities. \nWhen my great-grandfather came to this country from Germany in the early 20th century, he sat his children down at the dinner table the first night here and announced "Kein Deutsch!" or "No German!" \nHe wanted his family to be accepted into the Great American Melting Pot, and he knew that being different just wasn't the way to do that.\nThat's not to say that people shouldn't be proud of their heritage, or even feel free to express it every now and then. Germans have accomplished a lot of great things in the arts and other areas over the years, not counting the time period from about 1933 to 1945. And I also love being Irish because it means I never get hangovers.\nBut the fact remains that I don't walk around drunk in lederhosen for any part of the year, disseminating the works of Wagner and Jonathan Swift to anyone in my way.\nAnd coming from German stock, I might know a thing or two about forcing beliefs on others.\nNow, if you'll excuse me, it's lunchtime, and I have a sandwich with extra mayo calling my name.
(02/23/05 4:10am)
With this being the second and final day of IUSA elections, I decided to visit IUSA's current Web site at www.indiana.edu/~iusa/ to see just what Crimson has done for me so that I might know what to expect from next year's leaders.\nFrom the very front page it became apparent that there's something wrong here. There are about two dozen articles available to tell you what IUSA has done for you lately, all of which are links to articles from the IDS.\nWait, doesn't the site also point out that IUSA has appointed a Public Relations director among numerous other positions with very cool titles, that apparently do very little work? Shouldn't the PR director have a few press releases up instead of relying on the Indiana Daily Student? Nope, those are still "coming soon," according to the site.\nYou guys might want to get on that soon, considering you only have a couple more weeks in office.\nAfter all, IUSA has important issues on its plate right now, such as ... um, jacking up the transportation fee! And kind of (but not really) fighting the imminent passage of the athletics fee ... again!\nEvery year, the tickets just want to fight about alcohol laws, which they can't change, so it's no wonder no one with any power bothers to listen to IUSA.\nIt just promotes IU's reputation as a party school, and administrators love that about as much as they love a good dorm porn scandal.\nOf course, if anyone was listening, it's not as if IUSA would have a lot to say. The blind support of the transportation fee has certainly alienated a lot of students who don't care about the option of riding a bus, and the current administration's lackluster opposition of the athletics fee is a far cry from the feelings of most students I know.\nThe four tickets this year all just want more dialogue over the passage of fees, instead of all-out opposition to a fee that pays off a debt no student is responsible for incurring.\nWhere is the ticket that's willing to say, "Screw you! It's not the students' debt, and we refuse to pay it!"?\nIUSA has a yearly budget of about $90,000 and the student body president will receive a $4,500 salary. \nFor what?\nTo not even try to realize any campaign promises?\nOr maybe to spend $60,000 on a corvette as a previous Kirkwood administration did in 2002?\nAt this point, I don't think it would be that drastic to just eliminate the whole organization. Will anyone really miss the yearly political banners in February, or the periodic IDS "updates" that carry about as much weight as the ramblings outside of Kirkwood bars on Friday night?\nI certainly wouldn't.\nIt's not that I don't think students need someone to represent them, it's just that those we elect no longer have anything worthwhile to say, and administrators have stopped listening, for the most part. \nIUSA representatives only seem to care about making appointments for their friends so they can all have something nice to put on their resumes after graduation.\nHeck, a budget of $90,000 could be put to pretty good use, giving a few students full scholarships to IU each year.\nOr since IUSA doesn't seem to have any real objections to the athletics fee, why doesn't it just disband and let its budget be put toward the athletics budget?\nEither seems like a logical choice to me. IUSA does care about the students after all, right?
(02/16/05 5:10am)
For Valentine's Day this year, I decided to go all out. I put on a nice suit, took the girlfriend to a very pricey Italian restaurant and even got a bottle of champagne that I'll probably be paying off until graduation.\nAnd in the midst of this, over a delicious mousse dessert, she grabbed my hand, looked at me with her big beautiful brown eyes and said, "I heart you."\nOkay, no, not really. Hell, if she did that, she wouldn't have been my girlfriend by the time the check came, but there's still a heck of a lot of people out there who seem to think they can talk the way they do on the Internet in real life.\nI myself am guilty of this (probably because I hang out with too many people from http://thehoosierweb.com, an IU message board, and anyone who's a regular there knows I post way too much as well), but that doesn't make it any less annoying and something we shouldn't all try to avoid.\nFor heaven's sake, what does "I heart you" even mean? Do you pump blood for my circulatory system? Are you some kind of muscle? I just don't get it.\nThe whole sentence just reeks of something a 2-year-old would say, but in that case, he has an excuse -- he barely speaks English.\nIf you care for someone that much, just say, "I love you." Bastardizing such a common phrase only ensures that future generations will speak a poorer language.\nAnd the saddest part is just how likely that is. Language changes constantly, and slang is always being incorporated into it. The Oxford Dictionary considers "D'oh!" to be a word now, and http://dictionary.com defines "cromulent," a made-up word from an episode of "The Simpsons," as "fine, acceptable."\nIf "Simpsons" references can get into a dictionary, how much longer will it be until the people at Oxford accept the word "pwned" as well?\nToday people use many words Shakespeare created for his plays without batting an eye, and the Internet and its perversion of the English language is much more widespread now than the plays of Shakespeare were 400 years ago.\nBut in Shakespeare's case, he created words that didn't really have an equal. The language used on the Internet is just laziness. How much harder is it to write "owned" instead of "pwned?"\nI shudder to think what this might mean for the future of journalism, too. Here I am, spending thousands of dollars on becoming better writer, learning The Associated Press style and enduring endless hours of grammar assignments, yet I'll graduate only to find that I can get away with writing in leet speak. Imagine reading on the front page of The New York Times:\n"Today teh president pwned teh Democrat's tax proposal. Said teh 1337 prez: 'It was teh sux!!1' Democrats responded, "Oh noes!" and Senator Ted Kennedy proceeded to do his best impression of Bob Goatse."\nThe fact is, most of this stuff doesn't even mean anything and isn't very funny (except goatse -- the look on someone's face the first time they see it is priceless). \nA good rule might be that if you wouldn't put it in a term paper, don't actually let it pass through your lips.\nUsing the computer dialect in everyday conversation just makes you sound stupid to the majority of people, and if any of this garbage ever becomes acceptable outside of Internet message boards, I'm moving to Mexico to finally put all those Spanish classes to use. And I personally don't heart Mexico.\nI just pray I don't have some half-wit kid, who, when I die, decides to put "pwned" on my tombstone.
(02/10/05 4:28am)
I'm beginning to think that going to school in Indiana is a lot like having a first-class ticket on the Titanic, except the Titanic had a somewhat competent captain and crew.\nTake for example, the education budget. Gov. Mitch Daniels has proposed to freeze funding for the next two years on all levels, while Democrats just want to give everyone a little more money, but not enough to fill everyone's needs.\nYeah, that makes sense. I think next election I'll just vote for candidates by using eenie-meenie-minie-moe.\nBut political squabbling aside, I believe that several counties in Minnesota and other states have come up with a great idea that could actually leave the education budget with plenty of money to spare.\nBasically, counties in Minnesota, Tennessee and Colorado pay elementary and high school teachers according to how well they teach instead of how long they've taught, according to a Feb. 8 article on http://cnn.com. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has already proposed to institute the plan in his state as well.\nAnd if the states that elected stars from the great 1987 movie "Predator" support this idea, it has to be good!\nI attended a wonderful Indiana public school for all four years of high school (and a God-awful Indiana Catholic school before that), and am in my second year here at IU. For the most part, I was very impressed with my teachers, especially in high school.\nBut let's face it: There are a lot of teachers who are lazy because they are close to retirement, just there to coach sports or because they couldn't make it in the circus and had to go to teaching school.\nTherein lies the one problem with performance pay: Teachers set their own goals and then meet them. And if they want to make their classes easier every year to get test grades up and get a little more green in their pockets, they can.\nWell screw that. I say Indiana needs to make performance pay into law but give power back to the people -- or students, in this case. Let us rate the performance of each teacher at the end of the year.\nThey'll get the message eventually.\nWhere performance pay could really save the state money is on the college level, at least from what I've seen here.\nHow many of us have had to deal with professors who seem to resent students because they interfere with their research or professors who force you into taking "requirements" you don't really need or just plain don't understand the English language?\nWhy should they be getting more and more money each year just for phoning it in?\nWell, I say it's time to cut them off from the teat of Indiana tax payers!\nThis state is in serious economic trouble, and everyone needs to be pulling their own weight to save it.\nI can't think of any other profession that consistently awards people just for showing up every day for 20 years, regardless of performance.\nYeah, a lot of professors would complain as a result, but mostly just the pretentious ones who don't do much work anyway. So let them go to another state that will reward slacking. The teachers who want to earn their keep and can actually do something to stop the state's brain drain will stay in the system, and the state could save millions in pay raises every year.\nThat makes a lot more sense to me than partisan politics.
(02/01/05 4:30am)
I've done plenty of stupid stuff here in college, often involving gross amounts of Skol Vodka, urine and occasionally near-naked pictures of myself on the Internet, but I figure I have an excuse: I was drunk.\nWhat is inexcusable, however, is the recent rash of chain letters I have received from apparently sober people on http://thefacebook.com whom I'd normally think of as at least slightly more intelligent than mentally challenged chimpanzees.\nI guess I set my standards too high. \nTake, for example, an excerpt from a recent message I received, which even included signatures from several other classmates who attend this university:\n"A Japanese man in New York breeds and sells kittens that are called BONSAI CATS. That would sound cute, if it weren't kittens that were put into little bottles after being given a muscle relaxant and then locked up for the rest of their lives! The cats are fed through a straw and have a small tube for their faces. The skeleton of the cat will take on the form of the bottle as the kitten grows ... "\nSupposedly, if 500 people sign the petition, the Web site selling these cats will be shut down, and kittens everywhere will be safe from those nasty bonsai people.\nWow, cats shouldn't have to live in a jar like that their entire lives. We need to do something immediately.\nThere's just one problem. This site is a joke. The pictures of cats in jars on it were made using Photoshop. It's not even a new joke; it's been around since 1999.\nAnd I know some people aren't forwarding this as a joke when they send another message saying, "Whoops, I screwed up, it's not real. But uh, we should put aside such archaic notions as the First Amendment and work to ban the site anyway!"\nI don't know how many of you have actually played with a cat before, but they're kind of fussy animals, and something tells me it wouldn't be very easy to get one into a jar, much less market it. Actually, I'm confident you'd probably end up in jail pretty quickly for trying such a thing.\nWith a quick Google search, you could find out where this whole thing came from and delete the message after having a chuckle at peoples' gullibility. Or y'know, you could use common sense -- something that a lot of people seem to lack.\nBut there seems to be a good reason for the stupidity. According to U.S. News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges," 2005 Edition Rankings, IU gladly admits 81 percent of the people that apply.\nThat's about the same odds you have of nailing a drunk freshman this Friday night, maybe even better. \nI know University administrators are pressed to bring in as much cash as possible, but when you're admitting students who believe cats can be stuffed in jars and sold on the streets of New York, maybe the bar is being set a little low, and it's time to shorten up the buses.\nA lot of studies have shown standardized tests, such as ISTEP and the SAT, aren't good at determining how one will succeed in college, which the prevalence of these chain letters only seems to confirm.\nSo I propose a new admissions test that could really put IU at the forefront of higher education: The Internet Chain Letter Test of Intelligence.\nSimply have the office of admissions send prospective students an e-mail containing one of these inane online petitions like the Bonsai Kitten one above, and if they're stupid enough to respond, they're a little too stupid for IU.\nHonestly, we really don't need them here. Indiana already has a state school for "slower" students in West Lafayette.
(01/27/05 5:06am)
In the Buddhist tradition, your karma determines your fate after death, but at IU it can get you a free iPod.\nAn iPod was just one of many raffle prizes students could win Wednesday at Alumni Hall in the Indiana Memorial Union as part of the University's "Digital Karma" event to educate students about legal downloading alternatives.\n"When students arrive they get a quiz (about downloading), and when they pass it, they get good karma to use for the raffles," said Deputy Information Technology Policy Officer Merri Beth Lavagnino. "Some students are misled with software that claims to be 100 percent legal. The software can be legal, but the music and movies on it aren't."\nConsequences for illegal downloading have started to affect students already. Last March, lawsuits were filed against several unnamed IU students for illegal file sharing.\nMore than 1,000 students attended the event where their queries about technology were answered by the IU Copyright Office as well as representatives from iTunes, the Motion Picture Association and MSN Music among others.\n"We're supporting IU in its efforts to stop illegal movie downloads," said Anne Caliguiri, Worldwide Communications Coordinator for the MPA. "We encourage technology. We understand it's a good thing. We want people to get movies the way they want."\nOne avenue many universities have taken to curb illegal downloading is to team up with a legal provider of movies and music and charge students a small fee to use them.\n"We would consider it if students were interested, but there's just not a whole lot of student interest," Lavagnino said.\nOne such service in attendance at Digital Karma was Ruckus Networks, a legal downloading service that only works with colleges.\n"We take music, movies and TV and localize them to highlight what students want," said David Kochba, with campus relationships for Ruckus. "We update the site four times a day and work with campus media to give it an IU feel."\nKochba said the service, which offers more than 2,600 videos and 700,000 music tracks has spoken to the University in the past few weeks about the possibility of bringing Ruckus to campus.\nHowever, some students weren't quite sold by the much safer and legal alternatives to downloading presented at Digital Karma.\nJunior Andrea Hill said she stopped downloading music a couple years ago when the music industry began filing lawsuits against individual users, but she isn't quite ready to go completely legit.\n"I think it's a great concept, and I don't do it illegally anymore because I'm too scared of getting sued," Hill said, "But I don't want to pay for it either."\nHill did say she liked the idea of the University providing a downloading service.\nOthers were even more pessimistic about the idea of purchasing their favorite tunes online.\n"I like the technology, but I don't know if I'm going to buy music yet," said senior Daniel Gerstenhaber. "As long as you're ahead of other people you can get away with it."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Chris \nFreiberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.
(01/25/05 4:36am)
President George W. Bush just can't get anything right. \n He had the support of the entire country after Sept. 11, then pissed off a bunch of people with the Patriot Act. When the wrest of the world was still pretty much behind him, he decided to give them a big "up yours" with the invasion of Iraq. And in the midst of an already hotly contested election, he decided to make things even worse by proposing an amendment to ban gay marriage.\nNow, I know what you're thinking at this point: Oh hell, another dumbass college kid who thinks he knows American politics better than anyone else. \nWell, I agree with you. The worst part about the Bush administration's divisive policies is that they've made millions of college kids into a generation of wannabe political experts.\nThe symptoms may include: withdrawals when not viewing CNN or FOX News, chronic willingness to share overblown, idiotic and trite opinions with anyone within earshot and mild fatigue.\nNow there's nothing wrong with having opinions about issues that affect us all, but if one more idiot who's taken Y100 tells me about his genius plan to end terrorism, I'm going to punch a puppy. (Just kidding. I love puppies. I just hate stereotypical college kids who give the rest of us a bad name. Therefore, I will only punch their puppies).\nStop and think for a moment: You're still in college, working toward a degree, and have zero real-world experience. You barely have enough knowledge to potty-train a toddler, let alone solve decades-old international conflicts.\nWorst of all, 99 percent of the solutions made by the know-it-all kid with three poli-sci credits aren't even original. They're just slight variations on the annoying dribble that spills out of the mouths of people like Bill O'Reilly and Michael Moore daily. I know it's hard to believe, but yes, you can be just as annoying and whiny as Michael Moore.\nAnyway, since all stupid college kids who think they know politics basically have the same ripped-off opinions, to save time, effort and sanity for everyone else, I present political Mad Libs to better get your point across.\nStill, no one will care what you have to say, but at the very least it will be more entertaining, especially if you don't read it first and just fill in the word, creating hilarious paradoxes like "President Poop."\n"I am a (political affiliation) who believes that President (name)'s policy on (noun) is a(n) (adjective). According to an article I found on the biased Web site, (Web site name), (number) percent of people will be negatively affected by this policy.\n"Instead, we need to follow my policy, that of a (year in college) at (name of a college). I took (class number) last semester, so now I feel I have the perfect answer to the (noun) problem, something no other head-of-state has thought about proposing because they aren't as (adjective) as me. It's at least twice as good as the plan of respected politician (name).\n"Oh, and just because I can, I would like to call the (name) administration (plural noun) since they are (plural noun) who will never read this, refute my argument or otherwise care. But then again, neither will anyone else because I am a (noun)-head who has too much (noun) on my hands and believes (noun) like to hear me (verb)."\nThere are enough real problems on this campus like the parking situation and the upcoming renewal of the athletic fee that we can actually band together and change. It's just a waste of time to talk about things we don't truly understand and can't do anything about.
(01/20/05 5:33am)
While many students are just barely scraping by trying to pay for college by working in the food courts, senior Brent Coyle is getting paid to play video games.\nWhile it may be a little bit more complicated than that, trying out some of the latest video games is a big part of the job description for Coyle, the EA Sports campus representative.\nEA, the largest video game publisher in the world, is responsible for games such as Madden football, Need for Speed and The Sims, which together earn the company nearly $3 billion a year according to gaming site www.gamespot.com.\nCoyle, who has held the job for about four years, has been awarded three out of a possible seven awards by the company in a single year. Before that, no one had ever received more than one.\nHe has also used his success at IU to parlay two consecutive summer internships at the company's headquarters in Redwood City, California. \nBut with graduation approaching in May, Coyle is now looking to pass the torch.\nHe just wants his replacement to know that the job isn't all fun and games. Coyle's job is so time-consuming that he had to stay at IU for a fifth year.\n"The hardest part is dealing (with) handling school and a very demanding work load from EA," Coyle said. "However, the job itself becomes easy as long as you are organized, determined and enjoy what you do -- the rewards that come from that. If you begin to slip, I have seen reps at other schools fired just as quickly as they were hired. They either are unprepared for the change of pace and workload or aren't mature enough to handle responsibility."\nCoyle's longtime friend, senior Phil Nowak echoed that sentiment.\n"It's going to be really hard to fill Brent's shoes," he said. "(Brent) is very unique. I've never met anyone that's as responsible and reliable. He constantly has to make reports and he's constantly on the phone with EA execs. He's sacrificed the last four years of school for his career. I'm not sure he can find anyone to do that."\nAs campus rep, Coyle is responsible for posting fliers around campus advertising upcoming events, putting on said events to promote the newest EA games and letting the company know just how successful he was.\nCoyle's stipulations for a replacement are that he or she must be graduating in spring 2007 or later, and knowledge of the gaming world is a huge plus.\nCurrently he is e-mailing people who have attended previous EA events to gauge interest, but the position is open to anyone who meets those requirements.\n"The person I choose to replace me will take full charge of the program at the end of the semester, but if all goes well I will have a decision made in late March or early April," Coyle said.\nWhen Coyle was hired by the previous campus rep at the end of his freshman year he was given little advice on how to do the job -- something he plans to remedy with his replacement.\n"The best advice to them is to take the job very seriously," Coyle said. "The opportunities that are available far surpass the perks of the job ... I do not plan on pushing them into the deep end before they are ready."\nCoyle hopes to continue working in the video game industry after graduation.\n-- Contact Staff Writer Chris Freiberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.
(01/19/05 4:39am)
One crisp, spring day, when I was walking out of the Union, I heard a shout from some most-enlightened individual that, "Fat people smell!"\nOh wow, thanks for such a witty comment. I'm sure that's something an overweight person like me has never heard before. How hilarious. Next time why don't you try something more creative like, "High cholesterol will kill you by age 50!" or "That dude's got more ass than a drunken frat boy!"\nNormally, I would turn right around and pop him right in the face, but the kid and his friends were obviously clad in clothes from Hot Topic, and I never mess with people who are so anti-conformist that they are totally conformist.\nAnyway, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which we celebrated Monday, I would like to make a call to the University to further expand its diversity agenda. IU should begin by teaching tolerance of those who are big-boned, overweight, broad, heavyset, oversized, pudgy, roly-poly, tubby, husky, festively plump, large or just plain fat.\nWe are all familiar with the struggles that other minorities have gone through: blacks and slavery; Native Americans during colonial times; and, of course, the current hate-mongering toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.\nBut what of the struggles of the large individual? We struggle every day to fit in our pants, walk to class without having to stop to catch a breath, and then once we arrive at our destination, we silently pray that the said tight-fitting pants will not split.\nThe life of the husky person is not a pleasant one, from the extra time we must spend in the shower trying to reach our toes to clean them, to our girlfriends always telling us to get the hell off of them late at night because we're just too damn heavy.\nThe university and its "One for Diversity" project teach us to tolerate transsexual Samoan midgets, but where is the call for unity among the fat community?\nI say that one is not enough! In the case of large people everywhere, we need at least two to represent us and, in some cases, three or four! Therefore, I propose that the University begins a "Two for Obesity" program.\nLet us hang banners proclaiming this new directive throughout campus, particularly in the food courts where we large people gather most often, and in the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation and at the Student Recreational Sports Complex, where our more fit brothers exercise.\nFurther, just as "One for Diversity" is committed to finding art pieces from multicultural artists and displaying them around campus, let "Two for Obesity" fund art from plump painters to decorate IU.\nSure, there is art around us from several larger talents, and portraits of past fat people who have helped the university, but they aren't there for that purpose. We'll need plaques and more things to bring attention to ourselves. No doubt, by drawing more attention to how different we are we can only bring ourselves closer to others.\nTo paraphrase Dr. King in light of the recent holiday, I have a dream that one day in the state of Indiana there will be a barbecue with little skinny kids and little fat kids who will join hands around a giant picnic table and walk together as brothers and sisters. I have a dream that there will be ribs and hamburgers and fried chicken, and they will all eat together at the table of the Lord, free from prejudice, hate and stores that only sell shirts up to 2XL, all under the banner "Two for Obesity"
(01/12/05 4:28am)
I always dread a phone call from my Uncle Bill. It's not the fact that every other word out of his mouth is either a curse or an ethnic slur, and it's definitely not the fact that he smells like old pasta sauce, since that's hardly a factor over the phone.\nNo, what bothers me about my Uncle Bill is his conspiracy theories. \nThese are all old hat in his endless rantings, but the other night he went on a tangent about the imminent police state of the one-world government that will monitor our every move via the computer chips of the Antichrist (who, according to him, is none other than George W. Bush). I hadn't heard him this riled up since his legendary cough syrup binge of 1987.\nTo him the Patriot Act, which some see as invasion of basic rights, is just the beginning of a much larger conspiracy. Soon Congress will pass Patriot Act II, which will outlaw cash money, put a surveillance camera on every street corner and outlaw toothpaste, among other things.\nBut suddenly the normally baseless ramblings of this insane old coot got me thinking. See, there's no reason for the government, or anyone else for that matter, to infiltrate our lives with cameras on every street corner, biochips or security checkpoints.\nWe already think that telling everyone our every last thought and action will make us some kind of celebrity instead of worrying about invasion of privacy. \nDo you have a blog? Do you like to update it with exactly how you feel, what you like and dislike, what you're planning to do in the coming days, weeks and months? Even if you don't, millions of other people do, and they could be writing about you. \nEven putting up an away message is promoting this idea. Gather years of disconnected online journal posts, and the next thing you know, you have a case file about a person that the FBI could only dream of 30 years ago.\nBack then, putting together a detailed log of someone's thoughts and actions would take months of interviews and surveillance. Now a few links to a live journal embedded in someone's profile will get you all the information you could ever want to stalk that person. \nHeck, even here at the Indiana Daily Student, we've found it much easier to track down people, thanks to tools like www.thefacebook.com. No longer do we have to find friends of friends who might know you from a class and then beg them for your cell phone number; you were more than happy to give it to us or anyone else on the Web site.\nWe also know that you hate spaghetti and love the Dave Matthews Band, as well as some hot guy named Adam in your Stats class. Thanks for that.\nSee? That's exactly the type of crap we're all putting out there. We think it is completely random, but do you know who might be reading it? Do you have any idea why somebody might be reading it?\nIt's not just your best friend and your Aunt Petunia. We all can see it, and most of the time we don't care. But if, say, the government had a reason to be watching you, it could be very useful to them at some point.\nThere's a very false culture bred from "reality television" that seems to promote the idea that if you let everyone know your business, you're some kind of celebrity. That's a crock. \nLook at the information real celebrities put out to the public. They don't want us to know what's going on in their personal lives. No one but the most attention-starved has-been wants the paparazzi photographing his or her every move. There are some weird people out there (they've poked me on thefacebook!), and you never want to encourage a stalker, or worse, big brother.
(12/08/04 6:08am)
Bloomington Faculty Council President David Daleke began the last BFC meeting of the semester by announcing the 23 members of the IU-Bloomington chancellor search and screen committee Tuesday afternoon.\nThe committee has been charged with a nationwide search for the position, which was vacated by Sharon Brehm last fall. Ken Gros Louis is currently serving as interim chancellor.\n"The president is hoping to fill the position by July 1," Gros Louis said. "But when a committee starts in the middle of the year like this, sometimes the strongest candidates can be finalists somewhere else."\nSchool of Journalism Dean Trevor Brown has been chosen to chair the committee but said he won't know much more about his duties until he meets with IU President Adam Herbert Friday.\n"This is a committee in whom I have the highest level of confidence," Herbert said in a press release. "This position is the single most critical one I will fill. It has enormous consequences for the future of Indiana University." \nGros Louis has agreed to remain in the position until a successor has been chosen.\nAlso at the meeting, the BFC approved an item 30-13 to give priority registration to student athletes.\nIf the resolution also passes the University Faculty Council and the board of trustees, more than 600 NCAA-eligible students will be allowed to register for classes just after graduate students and just before seniors for the next three years.\n"What about students who work and student leaders?" asked IU Student Association President senior Tyson Chastain. "Students feel that with the problems with rainchecks, why are we making compromises? The two issues need to be addressed separately."\nThe only other Big Ten school that does not give priority registration to student athletes is Purdue, which uses a more stringent registration system based on demand for classes.\nMath Professor William Wheeler, chair of the educational policies committee, which presented the plan, said allowing student athletes to register early is different than allowing other students to register early because the University is responsible for the time constraints of athletes.\n"We can accommodate smaller groups, just not larger groups (with Peoplesoft)," Wheeler said. "Lots of groups feel like they have reasons to deserve priority. I've had freshman students in my classes taking 15 credit hours and working 40 hours a week at Old Navy to pay for college. My heart goes out to them, but we can't do anything about it besides increase financial aid."\nFinally, the BFC again read over the new policy on background checks for academic employees, which will go before the UFC next month.\nThe slightly revised policy calls for basic background checks for most academic employees and more in-depth criminal background checks for those people deemed to work with "vulnerable populations," such as children, as defined by state law.\n"There's really no reason we can see to do background checks for the academic positions," said School of Public and Environmental Affairs Professor Theodore Miller. "State law requires background checks of state employees. What we're proposing is a fairly standard background check of education, etc. -- the stuff we usually do."\nThe BFC will next meet Jan. 19. The UFC will meet Jan. 25.\n-- Contact campus editor Chris Freiberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.
(11/10/04 5:32am)
By day, 20-year-old Ryan Dyer is technically a sophomore at IU, though he's currently taking some time off to play online poker professionally. By night, he's "Dozer Makaveli, Expert Zombie Slayer and Unofficial Protector of America's Collective Yumhole."\nDyer, a native of Washington, Ind., is the Webmaster and main creative force behind www.duckmustard.com, a humor Web site in the same vein as www.ebaumsworld.com or the site of Internet humorist Maddox.\nThe inspiration for www.duckmustard.com came from Dyer's work on a blog for student-run www.thehoosierweb.com.\n"Everyone kept telling me I should write a book, so I decided to be lazy and just make a crappy Web site instead," he said.\nIn its first month online, the site has seen moderate success, receiving about 100 hits a day and generating enough revenue to maintain it for the next year or so.\n"We have loyal readers. Those loyal readers just happen to be hermits like I am, thus they have no friends to share the site with," Dyer said. "Also, our readers don't really contact us. I believe this is because of the extremely awkward nature of our content. What exactly does one say after experiencing the insanity that is duckmustard.com?"\n"Awkward" and "insane" are two of the more common terms to describe the site, mostly composed of bizarre, blog-like entries.\n"So about 10 months ago I was at Kroger at about three in the morning. I always do my shopping late at night, and since I live in a college town, all the stores stay open 24 hours a day," reads the beginning of one of the site's articles. "Anyways, as fate would have it, Satan was vacationing. Seems he has pretty much seen the entire world, and now he is hitting all the really lame spots he hasn't seen. I caught him in the middle of his Midwest vacation, as he was on his way to Odon, Indiana to go possum-beating with the locals."\nSophomore Danai Bastin, a fan of the site, believes the articles are much deeper than just the surface laugh-out-loud humor.\n"Even in the strangest stories that he writes, there's always some kind of message that seems to be there, usually political," Bastin said. "The key is to open yourself up to that different kind of humor and realize what's really being said."\nWith such surreal imagery and experiences, it's difficult to understand exactly where Dyer gets his ideas, even he doesn't know where they come from.\n"Really weird things just pop into my head out of nowhere," he said. "For instance, the other day I went into the bathroom (completely sober), and as soon as I opened the door, I saw Roseanne on the floor by the toilet. She was wearing sweatpants and a Tweety Bird sweatshirt. She had a giant ladle, like people use to dip soup with. Anyways, she was using the ladle to eat cereal out of my toilet bowl. Yes, she drained the toilet bowl and filled it with cereal because she couldn't find a big enough cereal bowl in my kitchen. I knew it wasn't real, but the image was so vivid I nearly wet myself. Sometimes I'll write stories around such experiences. In this particular situation, however, I just cried."\nDyer is currently taking time off from IU to pursue a career of online poker, where he estimates he makes about $30 to $40 an hour, and has even won several prizes of more than $1,000.\n"I am a mathematical genius and really good at figuring people out," Dyer said. "I began to realize that with enough practice, I could make a profession out of poker, which is totally awesome. Aside from being a pirate or a fighter pilot, I can't think of anything else a man would rather be."\nDyer plans to return to school eventually, though he will not major in psychology as he originally did; in fact, he doesn't even have a set career goal.\n"I guess my ultimate career goal is to never have to force myself to work. Almost everyone I know whines about their job. At the moment, I don't really work unless I feel like it. I think that is the way life should be. Most people spend 40 hours a week at a job they hate so they can get money to buy things they simply don't need. I don't have those kinds of goals. I want to be happy, that is it. Oh, and I want there to be a 'Ghostbusters 3.'"\n-- Contact campus editor Chris Freiberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.
(11/10/04 4:29am)
In a scene reminiscent of the recent remake of "Dawn of the Dead," hundreds of people poured into College Mall late Monday night to satiate an incredible hunger.\nBut unlike the zombies in that movie who were after brains, these "zombies" only craved a freshly shrink-wrapped copy of the Microsoft Xbox game "HALO 2."\n"'HALO' was possibly the greatest game of all time" said junior Aaron Lush as he shivered in the cold waiting at the front of the line for the mall doors to open. "With 'HALO,' there's a whole social factor behind it. Get 15 friends together and just blow each other up. It's always a good time."\nTwo stores in the mall, EB Games and Gamestop, opened at midnight Tuesday to sell the game to hundreds of eager fans. The line for Gamestop was nearly 300 people long. The EB line, nearly twice that. At 2 a.m. there were still people waiting to purchase the new game.\nAround 7,000 stores nationwide participated in the event.\nLocal Gamestop manager Aron Deppert said more than 500 people had reserved 'HALO 2' at the store, some since 2001, when the original game was announced. Last week, Microsoft announced that more than 1.5 million pre-orders had been sold for the game.\n"I have no idea why it's so popular," Deppert said. "I think people just like to hurt each other, just not in real life."\nThe original "HALO," released as an Xbox launch title in November 2001, has made such an impression on people that the first fans began waiting outside the mall at 7 p.m. for the game. Some of the predominantly male crowd even brought chairs.\n"I got a call from EB that said it might not be there if I don't take advantage of the midnight opening," said junior Ryan Murphy. "I can't imagine getting here five or six hours earlier, maybe a half hour, though."\n"HALO 2" comes in two forms. The first is the standard edition, packaged like any other Xbox game, and retails for $49.99. The second "limited edition" retails for $54.99 and comes in a metal case with a special "making of" DVD.\nBesides the standard graphic, sound and gameplay updates, the real hook of this sequel is online play -- something many gamers felt was sorely missing from the original once they experienced 16-player LAN games.\n"The game is not made for one player. It's made for Xbox Live," said Bloomington South High School junior Tyler DeLong.\nMeanwhile, Deppert still doesn't understand the widespread appeal of the game.\n"If I had a friend I wanted to shoot, I wouldn't play video games with him," he said.\n-- Contact campus editor Chris Frieberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.
(10/05/04 5:56am)
With such a drastic toll taken on both the people and the layout of the land in Germany's worst natural disaster ever, new steps were taken in water management and the construction and upkeep of hydraulic structures, which is exactly what visiting professor Robert Jüpner discussed in front of a small audience at Ballantine Hall Monday.\nJüpner is a professor of hydraulic engineering at the department of water management and director of the Institute for Water Management and Ecotechnology at the Magdeburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany.\nSurprisingly, Jüpner said some solutions to avoiding such future flooding problems are quite simple.\n"Flood disasters are natural events and can be expected," he said. "The reason people don't realize this is because the cycle of these floods is often more than a lifetime."\nWith increased emphasis on globalization, those in the audience were impressed with the understanding they gained of how another country copes with a problem such as flooding.\n"I didn't know much about the topic beforehand, but it was interesting to see how another country deals with disaster," sophomore Eric Smith said.\nJüpner also said that more people need to realize the risk associated with living in flood plains and that the protection offered by technical measures such as dykes is not absolute. \nHis final point of advice was for modern society to be more prepared for future catastrophes.\n"We have to expect these natural disasters in the future," Jüpner said. "There are some very serious theories that more conditions such as extreme droughts and floods (are on the way)."\nEven those in the country at the time of the flood weren't familiar with some of the information Jüpner presented.\n"I was in Germany at the time when the flooding was going on, but I had only seen some coverage on TV," sophomore Phil Johnson said. "It was a pretty interesting lecture."\nSince the Elbe flood more than two years ago, Germany, in cooperation with their neighbors in the Czech Republic, have come up with several new measures to prepare for the next major flood, such as an improved forecasting system, and better flood plain management and spatial planning.\n"What we see from history is that soon after a flood or other natural disaster we see cooperation between countries to have systems and give forecasts, but the process is going slowly," Jüpner said.\n- Contact campus editor Chris Freiberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu .
(04/23/04 11:58pm)
Sophomore Brandon Parker went to Los Angeles over spring break hoping to get lucky on "The Price is Right." And though his dreams of a "Showcase Showdown" didn't come true, he received an equally exciting parting gift for waiting in line: tickets to "The Wayne Brady Show."\n"I've been a fan ever since I watched 'Whose Line is it Anyway?' and decided to see him since we were so close to the studio," Parker says. "Wayne was very entertaining, energetic and seemed to really enjoy his show and entertaining his guests. You could tell he wasn't there just for the cameras."\nOne thing Parker couldn't help but notice was how tightly directed the show was.\n"All of the people on the set were very friendly and seemed to have everything planned out to the very last detail," he says. "Although there were ad-libbed parts, the show carried on quite well from my perspective and we had a great time."\nWhat Parker didn't know at the time was that much of the success of "The Wayne Brady Show" can be attributed to former Indiana University student Barry Glazer, now a director with credits ranging from the Wayne Brady Show to over 40 other television series and specials.\nGlazer studied theater at IU in the '50s, but dropped out before graduating to become an actor in New York. He credits the department for sparking his early interest in acting.\n"What inspired me was the great theater department," Glazer says. "All I was interested in was getting to New York and acting, even though my whole family had nothing to do with show business."\nBreaking into the competitive New York theater scene was harder than Glazer expected, and he soon found himself giving tours at the NBC studio.\n"I would always use different accents on the tours," Glazer says. "People wouldn't know if I was from the south or what."\nGlazer's career outlook was bleak when one day he witnessed a director preparing for "The Perry Como Show." Not only did the director set the stage for the show that day, but for a new direction in Glazer's life.\n"(The director) was yelling and he just had total control," Glazer says. "It was fascinating. I had never seen a director work like that. I said, 'Forget acting, that's what I want to do.'"\nGlazer soon found himself as a fill-in director for the news, and quickly moved to another New York station where he directed an early rock 'n' roll show similar to "American Bandstand."\nThe young director's style, which later helped set the standard for music videos, eventually caught the attention of ABC in Los Angeles where Glazer oversaw daytime programming.\nIt was there Glazer began his most well-known directing work on "American Bandstand" from 1971-88.\n"One day Dick Clark came up to me and said 'I don't know you from a hole in the head, but I'm going to let you direct next week.' He said, 'If you do good, stay on. If you do bad, goodbye.'"\n"I went home and threw up I was so nervous," Glazer says.\nSince that time Glazer has worked as director or producer for literally dozens of shows, including "LIVE! with Regis and Kathie Lee!" and the "The Suzanne Somers Show." His work has gotten him two Emmy awards and a dozen Emmy nominations.\nGlazer doesn't have a favorite show and just enjoys directing, but has especially enjoyed directing "The Wayne Brady Show."\n"'The Wayne Brady Show' is one of the best things I've worked on in a long time," Glazer says. "There are some of the most creative talents I've ever worked with here."\nThose who work with Glazer say he has an incredible talent for directing a live show and thinking quickly when things don't go the way they're supposed to.\n"One of the best things about him is he has the ability to be incredibly spontaneous," says "Wayne Brady Show" executive producer John Redmann. "He's calm even among last minute changes. And when things happen that aren't planned he rolls with the punches and covers them up."\nGlazer says the impromptu nature of live television is his favorite thing about directing.\n"Your adrenaline is rushing because anything can happen," he says. "There's all these goofs and mistakes and things that should be bleeped out but don't always get bleeped out. I love it."\nAnd for all Glazer's success, it apparently hasn't gone to his head.\n"He doesn't have any ego or attitude," Redmann says. "Crews love him. They'll do anything for him."\nUnfortunately, "The Wayne Brady Show" did not get picked up for a third season, but Glazer will direct "The Tony Danza Show" later this year.\nSo what advice does Glazer have for current IU students thinking of following in his footsteps? First he suggests taking courses in TV, especially anything about production. These courses were not available when he attended IU. But other than that, he says there's a lot of luck involved in breaking into the business. \n"I hate to say this, but it's basically who you know and where you are at the right time," he says.
(04/22/04 4:00am)
Sophomore Brandon Parker went to Los Angeles over spring break hoping to get lucky on "The Price is Right." And though his dreams of a "Showcase Showdown" didn't come true, he received an equally exciting parting gift for waiting in line: tickets to "The Wayne Brady Show."\n"I've been a fan ever since I watched 'Whose Line is it Anyway?' and decided to see him since we were so close to the studio," Parker says. "Wayne was very entertaining, energetic and seemed to really enjoy his show and entertaining his guests. You could tell he wasn't there just for the cameras."\nOne thing Parker couldn't help but notice was how tightly directed the show was.\n"All of the people on the set were very friendly and seemed to have everything planned out to the very last detail," he says. "Although there were ad-libbed parts, the show carried on quite well from my perspective and we had a great time."\nWhat Parker didn't know at the time was that much of the success of "The Wayne Brady Show" can be attributed to former Indiana University student Barry Glazer, now a director with credits ranging from the Wayne Brady Show to over 40 other television series and specials.\nGlazer studied theater at IU in the '50s, but dropped out before graduating to become an actor in New York. He credits the department for sparking his early interest in acting.\n"What inspired me was the great theater department," Glazer says. "All I was interested in was getting to New York and acting, even though my whole family had nothing to do with show business."\nBreaking into the competitive New York theater scene was harder than Glazer expected, and he soon found himself giving tours at the NBC studio.\n"I would always use different accents on the tours," Glazer says. "People wouldn't know if I was from the south or what."\nGlazer's career outlook was bleak when one day he witnessed a director preparing for "The Perry Como Show." Not only did the director set the stage for the show that day, but for a new direction in Glazer's life.\n"(The director) was yelling and he just had total control," Glazer says. "It was fascinating. I had never seen a director work like that. I said, 'Forget acting, that's what I want to do.'"\nGlazer soon found himself as a fill-in director for the news, and quickly moved to another New York station where he directed an early rock 'n' roll show similar to "American Bandstand."\nThe young director's style, which later helped set the standard for music videos, eventually caught the attention of ABC in Los Angeles where Glazer oversaw daytime programming.\nIt was there Glazer began his most well-known directing work on "American Bandstand" from 1971-88.\n"One day Dick Clark came up to me and said 'I don't know you from a hole in the head, but I'm going to let you direct next week.' He said, 'If you do good, stay on. If you do bad, goodbye.'"\n"I went home and threw up I was so nervous," Glazer says.\nSince that time Glazer has worked as director or producer for literally dozens of shows, including "LIVE! with Regis and Kathie Lee!" and the "The Suzanne Somers Show." His work has gotten him two Emmy awards and a dozen Emmy nominations.\nGlazer doesn't have a favorite show and just enjoys directing, but has especially enjoyed directing "The Wayne Brady Show."\n"'The Wayne Brady Show' is one of the best things I've worked on in a long time," Glazer says. "There are some of the most creative talents I've ever worked with here."\nThose who work with Glazer say he has an incredible talent for directing a live show and thinking quickly when things don't go the way they're supposed to.\n"One of the best things about him is he has the ability to be incredibly spontaneous," says "Wayne Brady Show" executive producer John Redmann. "He's calm even among last minute changes. And when things happen that aren't planned he rolls with the punches and covers them up."\nGlazer says the impromptu nature of live television is his favorite thing about directing.\n"Your adrenaline is rushing because anything can happen," he says. "There's all these goofs and mistakes and things that should be bleeped out but don't always get bleeped out. I love it."\nAnd for all Glazer's success, it apparently hasn't gone to his head.\n"He doesn't have any ego or attitude," Redmann says. "Crews love him. They'll do anything for him."\nUnfortunately, "The Wayne Brady Show" did not get picked up for a third season, but Glazer will direct "The Tony Danza Show" later this year.\nSo what advice does Glazer have for current IU students thinking of following in his footsteps? First he suggests taking courses in TV, especially anything about production. These courses were not available when he attended IU. But other than that, he says there's a lot of luck involved in breaking into the business. \n"I hate to say this, but it's basically who you know and where you are at the right time," he says.
(04/19/04 5:02am)
The Game Live Tour will invade the Indiana Memorial Union's Frangipani Room Wednesday, featuring more than 20 new and yet-to-be released video games for all the current consoles and personal computers.\nThe games will be available to play for free from noon until 5 p.m. The companies on the Game Live Tour this year include Electronic Arts, the number one video game publisher in the world, Rockstar Games, creators of the popular Grand Theft Auto franchise, and Ubisoft, the company responsible for the Splinter Cell games.\nBesides showcasing games for the Sony Playstation2, Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube, cellular phone giant Nokia will be demonstrating its all-in-one cell phone/portable gaming device/MP3 player, the N-Gage.\n"This is a great opportunity for students to kill time in-between classes by playing games that aren't even on the market yet in an atmosphere very different from when they play at home," said Union Board Marketing Director Sarah O'Brien.\nThe Game Live Tour, based in Sausalito, Calif., has been touring college campuses since late 2002, but this is the first time it has hit IU, a prospect which has many gamers salivating.\n"I can't wait to try out some of the new games," freshman and avid gamer Zach Sutphin said. "I'd like to know if something is worth my money beforehand."\nThe tour displays games on a scalable 50-screen PC and Video kiosk system administered by representatives from the publisher. EA Games will be on hand with giveaways and two current big sellers, "Fight Night 2004," for all three systems, and "Samurai Warriors," which EA is publishing for the PS2. Also being shown to most gamers for the first time will be "Burnout 3," a popular racing sequel that won't hit consoles until September.\n"This will be a huge event for gamers," said EA spokesman Trey Geiger. \nAfter trying out unreleased games, gamers can give feedback to its creators. Many of these suggestions are put into the game before release, Sutphin said.\n"It's always important for companies to get feedback about their games," Sutphin said. "We know what we want to play, but a lot of companies don't unless we tell them."\n-- Contact senior writer Chris Freiberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.
(04/13/04 6:17am)
A freshman who stars in an adult Web site featuring semi-nude pictures of her taken in her dorm room and showers at Briscoe-Shoemaker will not be charged through the campus judicial system, Dean of Students Richard McKaig revealed Monday.\n"It was agreed that this is a situation like those in the past when students have posed for Playboy," McKaig said. "The University does not condone the activity, but it is also outside of the University to control it."\nKeira, as she has asked to be called, has received international media attention since news of her Web site, www.teenkeira.com, broke last week.\nMuch of the controversy arose over concerns Keira may have broken the student code of conduct. According to the code, "lewd, indecent, or obscene conduct" on University property can result in a judicial board hearing.\nPolice confirmed to him that they discovered no unlawful activity, and UITS confirmed that the site was not being run on the University's network. \nHe also said Keira has agreed to not take anymore pictures in common areas such as the showers.\n"It appears as if no one in the showers was disturbed by the pictures at the time they were taken." McKaig said. "She has also tried to get some of those pictures off the site."\nIn fall 2002 several students went through the judicial system for participating in the filming of an adult movie in Teter Quad by Shane Enterprises. It is unknown what, if any, punishment those students received.\nBut McKaig said Keira's Web site, which does not advertise any affiliation with the University though charges a $24.95 per month fee, is not the same thing.\n"This doesn't rise to the same level of exploitation of IU's name or marks," McKaig said. "I haven't viewed the film or the site, but I've been advised that even the acts the subjects are engaged in are significantly different."\nIU Student Association president Casey Cox agreed with the administration's decision.\n"This didn't seem as exploitative (as the Shane's World video)," Cox said. "In that case the fact that we were named the No. 1 party school was used to facilitate the filming, and the University name was used for profit. I think there's a big difference."\nKeira did not return phone messages by press time on the University's decision, but has previously defended the site.\n"I don't feel it's porn," Keira said in a previous Indiana Daily Student article. "You can call it an adult site, but there's no intercourse or oral sex. There's not anyone else in the pictures with me. I'm not even fully nude."\n-- Contact senior writer Chris Freiberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.
(04/12/04 1:29pm)
This weekend, Lazerlite amusement center will be invaded by dozens of dancing fools from all over the state, but they aren't so foolish as to not support a good cause when they see one.\nLazerlite, located on East Third Street, will be holding its third "Dance Dance Revolution" marathon Friday and Saturday.\nFor $10, participants get to play as much "DDR" as they can handle and help support Riley Hospital for Children of Indianapolis. Riley Hospital for Children is one of the nation's leaders in pediatric medicine.\nJim Halliday, who works in the IU music library, has organized the event for three years now to give something back to the hospital that has helped both of his children.\n"Both of my children were at Riley's after they were born because of a blood disorder," Halliday said. "I've got nothing but positive things to say about them. This seemed like that natural place to help out."\n"DDR," which is made by the Konami Digital Entertainment was first released in Japanese arcades in 1998. A U.S. release followed in 2000, but many arcades prefer the Japanese version because there is a wider selection of machines from which to choose.\nHome versions and pads are also available for the Sony PlayStation game consoles and Microsoft's Xbox.\n"Most of the songs are in English, but you read the lyrics in Japanese," said Adam Abel, a "DDR" enthusiast and employee at Lazerlite. "It just looks better."\nA "DDR" arcade cabinet consists of a platform made up of four arrows on which a player stands. Meanwhile, at the top of the screen are four stationary arrows. Scrolling arrows pass over these, and as they do, the player hits the corresponding arrows on the pad to rack up combinations.\nHalliday discovered the game about two years ago when he took his daughter to Lazerlite.\n"We went there to play some other games, and I saw 'DDR,' and I said, 'What's that over there?'" Halliday said. "I was almost instantly hooked. Soon, it was me dragging her to Lazerlite instead of the other way around."\nLazerlite currently has two Japanese "DDR" machines -- one Fourth mix, and one Eight mix.\n"They're our most popular games with the older kids," said Lazerlite owner Susie Wolfgong.\nHalliday has been playing video games since the days of Pac-Man but said he hasn't found a game like "DDR" in a long time.\n"I'm a video game fan from way back in the golden age," he said. "But I probably hadn't been really addicted to a game for years until 'DDR.' It's addictive, but in a good way."\n-- Contact senior writer Chris Freiberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.
(04/08/04 6:05am)
Dean of Students Richard McKaig has turned the investigation into an adult Web site featuring semi-nude pictures of a freshman in her dorm room and the showers of Briscoe-Shoemaker over to the Office of Student Ethics.\n"Their job now is to discover if student ethics were violated and if the case should be reviewed by the judicial system," McKaig said.\nStudent ethics will review the site, www.teenkeira.com, as well as independent information gathered from the residence halls, McKaig said. They are expected to report their findings to the dean of student's office Friday.\nThe Office of Student Ethics said they were not aware if the investigation had been turned over to them. Further calls were not returned.\nSince news of the site broke Tuesday, students have been divided as to whether Keira, as she has asked to be called, is doing anything wrong.\n"It's really no big deal," junior Josh Smith said. "She's not trying to exploit IU, and the site seems to be pretty classy."\nIU Student Association President Casey Cox said the site is only receiving publicity because of an October 2002 incident in which actresses from the pornographic film company Shane Enterprises were allowed to film within Teter Quad in exchange for oral sex.\n"This wouldn't even be a news story if it hadn't been for the negative press IU received from Shane's World last year," Cox said.\nKeira has been contacted by several media outlets so far. A producer from the Comedy Central show "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn" asked her to appear on a show this week via Web cam, but she declined since she does not have one, and because of the location.\n"They wanted to do it from my dorm and I don't want to get in any more trouble," Keira said.\nCox also offered IUSA support for Keira if she so chooses.\n"IUSA has a department of student rights that offers representation for students," he said. "If Keira chooses to go that route, IUSA will do their best to help her out."\nMany other students support Keira, who told the Indiana Daily Student Tuesday she started the site to help pay for school and support her family.\nWednesday night, she identified herself as "teen Keira" and posted a message for her supporters and critics on www.thehoosierweb.com, a popular site for students that is not affiliated with the University.\n"Thanks to those who are being supportive, and screw whoever doesn't," read the brief message.\nJunior Shaun Keihn, a featured writer for the site, blamed the cost of higher education for forcing Keira into the world of adult Web sites.\n"Despite the site being the epitome of American capitalism, if the University stopped jacking (up) the price of tuition, poor, under-privileged girls like "teen Keira" wouldn't have to put up sites like this," Keihn said. "I blame the University."\n-- Contact senior writer Chris Freiberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.
