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(06/05/08 10:41pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Pizza connoisseurs have come to the right place. Bloomington boasts about 10 different pizza places, many with several locations each unique to Bloomington. But with a selection so gargantuan, students might need some initial help sorting out what’s good from what is only considered edible between 3 and 5 a.m.For the pizza consumer who craves pizza at 3:30 in the morning and appreciates a quick delivery, Pizza Express, voted best late-night munchies in the Indiana Daily Student’s 2007 Best of Bloomington poll, is the best bet. Kiley Schmitz, a junior, said she loves Pizza Express because it’s open late (until 4 a.m. on weekends) and delivers faster than most other places. The restaurant offers a “Big Ten Bargain,” which consists of a large one-topping pizza, two drinks and eight bread sticks for $12.95.Additionally, it offers 11 specialty pizzas, including its most popular pizzas, the Dixie Chicken and the Supreme.Jesse Bloom, general manager at the 10th Street Pizza Express, said what differentiates Pizza Express from other places is its speed of service, usually about 20 minutes.For students looking for something even more affordable than the Big Ten Bargain, Aver’s Pizza offers the Crazy Aver’s Deal for $9.99. It offers a medium one-topping pizza, a dozen bread sticks, dipping sauce and two fountain drinks. For another $2, students can upgrade to large. It might not cost much, but it’s still good, said Aver’s General Manager Chris Wolf. He said Aver’s has better-quality food and service than other Bloomington pizzerias. Also, Aver’s has the Cream and Crimson pizza, which features alfredo sauce, gorgonzola and cheddar cheese, oven-roasted red potatoes and bacon seasoned with garlic and dill.But for students who would rather kick back and enjoy live music while fulfilling their pizza craving, Cody Young, an IU alumnus, said his favorite Bloomington location to snag a pizza is Max’s Place. “They have incredible pizza, incredible calzones and live music,” he said.Max’s Place Owner Travers Marx explained that the restaurant makes its dough and sauce and creates pizza the best traditional way possible: on a thin crust baked in a brick oven. Max’s has a variety of less standard toppings, such as spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, roasted garlic and ricotta cheese that come on its most-demanded house pizza, the Crossroads. The bill will cost you a bit more than at some other establishments, but many may think it’s worth it for the atmosphere of live music on the weekends and the brick-oven taste.The kingpin of Bloomington pizza, though, seems to be Mother Bear’s Pizza, affectionately termed by many students as “Mo Bear’s.” Mother Bear’s has been voted the best pizza in Bloomington in the IDS Best of Bloomington poll two years in a row. “Everything is fresh, the dough is made daily, (and) the vegetables and ingredients are fresh and not frozen,” Manager Karen “Wiz” Wisniewski said. But students have their own reasons for loving Mother Bear’s. Junior Kaity Dunn attributes her Mother Bear’s affection to the fact that they put the sauce on top of the cheese for deep-dish pizza. And sophomore Meagan Shebel said the bread sticks are what keep her coming back. Mother Bear’s boasts the Munchie Madness special, which includes a 10” one-topping pizza, a choice of bread sticks or cheesy bread, a two liter of soda and two homemade brownies for $11.95. “You just can’t get what they have anywhere else,” Ivy Tech Community College sophomore Rebecca Luzier said.
(06/05/08 3:12am)
Monday marked the one-month anniversary of Cyclone Nargis’s devastating rampage through Burma, and the outlook for victims remains dire.\nInternational aid workers are still discovering survivors who have yet to receive any form of assistance since the storm hit. The United Nations estimates approximately 1.4 million people are still in dire need of food, water, shelter and medical care. Naval ships from France, Britain and the United States holding vital helicopters that are necessary to reach the hardest hit areas loiter offshore awaiting permission from the junta (Burma’s military government) to spring into action or, as seems more likely now, return home unused. \nBureaucratic red tape continues to obstruct relief efforts, prompting frustration from the international community: “By still delaying and hampering aid efforts ... the generals are showing that, even during a disaster, oppression rules,” said the group Human Rights Watch. The extremely xenophobic junta fears that their repressive and tyrannical grip could be weakened by allowing international agencies and workers into the country; additionally, they want to avoid victims witnessing aid coming directly from countries that the junta have portrayed as hostile powers, such as the U.S. \nThe irritation and vexation culminated on Sunday, as relief agencies still reported much difficulty in reaching survivors, despite the ruling junta’s leader’s promise of full access to the hardest hit areas nine days before, when U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates indicted Myanmar of “criminal neglect” for obstructing large-scale international relief efforts. \nDespite the international community’s exasperation and inability, by no fault of their own, to provide the necessary relief, it is extremely important that we do not turn our eyes away from this humanitarian disaster.\nThis false promise made by the junta has not been their first in recent history; analysts of Myanmar point out that the regime has successfully used assurances and deception in the past to divert worldwide censure until Burma disappears from the headlines. This tactic was employed as recently as September, during a peaceful uprising led by monks. Their commitments included a dialogue with the democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is now under house arrest, but were quickly consigned to oblivion after international attention waned.\nJosef Silverstein, an expert on Myanmar at Rutgers University, explained in an article in the International Herald Tribune: “In all these crises that the Burmese face, there always is the teaser to take the pressure off the government. They seem like they are going to cooperate, and just as soon as comment dies down, anything that is going to be useful dies with it.” \nThe junta is attempting to forcibly rebuild its tattered country. They are evacuating thousands from shelters and coercing children to jeopardize their safety by returning to still damaged and hazardous schools, where disease can often spread. However, it is important to remember that the Burmese still face extremely hard times. Materials for rebuilding are becoming more unavailable and expensive, their economy could possibly collapse, and less than a month remains to sew seeds in the Irrawaddy Delta to avoid dangerously reduced rice production and a possible food shortage. It is of the utmost importance for the survivors of the cyclone that the international community doesn’t forget about them – or avert their scrutiny from the oppressive junta government.
(05/21/08 11:06pm)
Everyone knows grandparents love nothing more than showing off pictures of their grandchildren. And while grandparents are particularly fanatic about kiddy photos, who doesn’t love to see a good naked-baby picture? In fact, I distinctly recall that throughout my childhood, Wal-Mart offered the adorable “baby-bath-bucket” photo shoot complete with rubber ducky so parents could commission professionals to take their baby’s naked pictures and have them printed in glossy mass quantities.\nUnfortunately, the safety and welfare of the much-loved naked-baby picture has been threatened in the Supreme Court this week. On Monday, the Court upheld a federal law intended to fight child pornography with a 7-2 vote. The law sets a five-year mandatory sentence for anyone “promoting or “pandering” (offering to provide or asking for others to provide) child pornography. \nPossession, thankfully having already been illegal for quite some time now, is not included. Now critics question what exactly “promoting” consists of and point to possible hypotheticals in which previously law-abiding citizens could be arrested on a count of promoting child porn: Grandma e-mailing pictures of, say, grandchildren in cute pajamas entitled “kids in bed,” certain mainstream Hollywood movies depicting adolescent sex such as “Titanic,” and even some classic literature. \nThe Court overturned the previous ruling by a Georgia appeals court that, citing examples like these, said the law was unconstitutional because it is too broad, and, in all actuality happens to be an infringement on free speech. This legislation clearly makes possession of innocent materials interpreted by someone else as inappropriate or simple discussion of something illegal against the law. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, defended the law’s constitutionality saying that First Amendment protections do not apply to “offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography.” Interesting. \nWhile I certainly oppose and condemn both the people offering and the people asking for these repugnant materials, I did not realize the Constitution allows conditionals to be placed on the Bill of Rights for citizens who have yet to be convicted of breaking the law. Justice David Souter, in his dissent, maintained that freedom of speech requires us to be somewhat more lenient in our definitions of pandering or proposing.\nThe government has repeatedly claimed the law was never intended to prosecute mainstream movies or grandparents. The legislation, however, makes no concrete designations, and violators are at the mercy of the interpretations of the prosecutor. Additionally, the law is rather futile because pandering and possessing often go together. In fact, Michael Williams, the defendant, was convicted both for promotion and pandering as well as possession and so clearly would have been prosecuted anyway. \nWilliams was also going to serve both sentences consecutively and thus the new law had no real impact on his punishment. Its only real consequence is its infringement on free speech, as it will only increase the potential for the court to mislabel who was “pandering,” while doing virtually nothing to those who are clearly guilty.
(05/14/08 10:40pm)
Americans should be scared of bathtubs. \nThat’s right. The seemingly innocent and inanimate basin that has always peacefully rested in your bathroom is a serious threat ... or at least as serious as terrorism. In fact, the chances that you’ll drown in your bathtub are greater than the odds of you being killed in a terrorist attack. \nAnd yet the American political climate and the prevailing mood revealed in polls would have you believe otherwise. While terrorism is a serious problem that certainly cannot be overlooked, the lack of a major terrorist attack in the past seven years paints a different picture from the one of fear and negativity that Americans tend to see – governments, working together, can effectively inhibit the efforts of extremist groups. \nFor example, Fareed Zakaria wrote in the May 12 issue of “Newsweek” that lately, Islamic jihadists have been put on the run, forced to scatter and work locally in small units with undetectable weapons while multiple governments worldwide successfully track them and their money.\nThis is a major example of the prominent attitude of doubt, insecurity and general pessimism that has emerged recently among Americans. In fact, 82% of Americans say that the U.S. is seriously off on the wrong track, which is just one point lower than the record in 1973. But while the overall attitudes and views of Americans are becoming more and more obvious, their underlying causes are a little more difficult to pinpoint. In actuality, the threats that we face today are relatively tame in comparison to threats we perceived in the late 20th century, such as the spread of Communism and its corollary effects.\nToday, such needless worry can be found anywhere from the Department of Homeland Security’s color-coded risk assessment (which hasn’t dropped below yellow or “elevated risk” in recent memory) to expert publications. \nOne such document, written by a group of 200 senior government officials and business executives, many of who are knowledgeable on security and terrorism, said that a major terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction occurring before 2004 was “likely.” \nAnd we ill-advised citizens naturally picked up this habit of cynicism as we slowly discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that the war wouldn’t actually be over in the short amount of time that many top officials predicted. \nIn reality, the world is becoming a much safer place; levels of global violence have returned to the low levels experienced in the 1950s. In fact, Steven Pinker, a polymath professor from Harvard, has stated that we are currently experiencing “the most peaceful time of our species’ existence.” Yet our skepticism prevents us from letting reality shape our worldview. We are letting this cynicism spread to our general mood about America and allowing this perceived omnipresent terrorist threat to get us down. \nAmericans need to return to optimism and the belief that “Yes, we can.” And a little honesty from the administration every now and again wouldn’t hurt.