""When I was asked for my opinion, I explained that Islam was like a mental cage. At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for the bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage.""
Lacking my iPod that I had left behind the last time I was home, I was much more perceptive of my surroundings on my walk home from work on a typically frigid January evening this past week. This heightened level of auditory and visual awareness took my mind away from its normal daydream instead to the attention of a woman. She was pushing a high stack of blue soda containers via cart on the sidewalk outside of the Equinox. Seeing that she was struggling to push the top-heavy cart over a raised slab of concrete, I asked her if I could be of any assistance. Her reply was one of self-determination.
Still remember the stressful days of college application? Your piggy bank was never full enough for the application fees, $50 here and $60 there. Next came the tortuous months when every frantic reach for the mail box ended with you empty-handed. Thanks to fast-track college application, all these pains could fade out of a high school senior's life, but that might not be an entirely positive development.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told Americans last week to ""get angry"" about climate and clean energy legislation.
Any person who knows me relatively well might tend to describe me, among many things, as occasionally frugal. So as a frequent penny pincher, I too am surprised to find myself endorsing tuition increases.
The past year has not been easy on President Obama. I've often wondered why he wanted the job in the first place, and how he can carry himself with such poise despite being mired in so many promises that he cannot hope to fulfill during his presidency. During the Copenhagen climate talks, President Obama made another lofty promise, one meant to inspire other countries to rise up to the challenge of our changing global environment. With or without the approval of the Senate, Obama made a verbal agreement that the U.S. would drop carbon emissions 17 percent below what they were in 2005 by the end of this decade, something that will be difficult to do without imposing a radical gradient that is steep enough to change the American lifestyle. The climate talks came and went, and Obama was essentially left with the burden of leading us into a more environmentally friendly decade.
Last Tuesday, UW Associate Athletic Director John Jentz told the Athletic Department's Finance, Facilities and Operations Committee that, in order to supplement $60 million in lost revenue, ticket prices for Wisconsin sporting events could increase in the next year. This is bad news for all Badger fans as the sports they love will become more expensive at a time when, given the economic downturn, many cannot afford it. But raising the cost of tickets on students, a group that shells out more than any other, is even more heinous. Raising the cost of tickets for students will have a large, detrimental effect on fans for comparatively little positive impact on the Athletic Department's budget.
Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, may have summed it up best when he said, ""I believe it's a solution in search of a problem."" Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz has revised his proposal that would prohibit bar owners and their employees from drinking while they serve alcohol so that it doesn't include entertainers (who are technically independent contractors) or those involved in sampling for quality purposes. However, said sampling would likely be limited to an indeterminate number of drinks per shift. Still, at least one revision was essential for this proposed ordinance if it was going appear plausible at all. But the question still remains: Why did Cieslewicz and Ald. Michael Schumacher, District 18 propose this ordinance in the first place?
Does this sound familiar? For a while now, someone you know has been calling you repeatedly and inquiring about your whereabouts. Sometimes, the caller hangs up immediately after you answer the phone. You are receiving unwanted e-mails, letters and gifts. You even suspect that your e-mail and Facebook accounts are being monitored. In other words, you are being stalked.
Voter advocacy and campaign finance reform advocates are up in arms over last Thursday's Supreme Court decision that overturned legislation prohibiting corporations, unions and other special interest groups from spending their money to advocate for a specific candidate. Since the Court's controversial 5-4 ruling, talk radio waves have been abuzz with claims that the decision overturns century old restrictions on corporations, special interest groups and unions in political campaigns.
Apparently, ears can be sexy. I was under the ignorant impression that so long as your ears did not evoke childhood memories of Dumbo's flight, stick out from your neck, or you know, weren't there, ears were unimportant to overall attractiveness. I know, you must be thinking, ""What rock have I been living under?"" According to Heidi Montag, one of the reality celebs that make headlines by creating a ""situation,"" she did not have sexy ears until she went under the knife for 10 simultaneous procedures to perfect her body. The procedures included a neck liposuction, breast augmentation revision and a brow lift, the but for Montag, they do not seem to be enough. For now, it's the new year, new her, but she claims that surgery will still be necessary down the road.
Anything bugging you recently? Perhaps it's too early to ask that question since we're just one week into the new semester. But even minor stressors may disrupt a well-kept daily schedule and cast a shadow over your bright mood in the long run. Meeting a professional counselor just seems like making a mountain out of a mole hill. Friends, on the other hand, are already too busy riding in the fast lane of college life. That is how SPILL, an e-mail-based peer listening group, came to fill the void. Although SPILL does not provide any forms of counseling services, it offers a novel approach to the mental health of college students.
Today's guest column is a response to the Green Room article ""Take a clean look at nuclear energy"" by Rachel Slaybaugh.
The election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts Tuesday night sent tremors through the political world. A wake up call was sent to the Washington establishment that Americans were, at the very least, concerned about the direction the country was heading. A Republican was able to pull off the unthinkable by taking on the Massachusetts Democratic machine and turning a seat that was once held by none other than Ted Kennedy into a seat that sustained the filibuster and blocked any hope of health-care reform. In a state where Democrats enjoy a three-to-one advantage in terms of voter registration, how could such a high profile Democrat lose when so much was on the line?
After New Year's it was revealed that Federal animal welfare inspectors who visited UW in December found twenty violations on campus. Violations included dogs that did not receive adequate veterinary care despite vomiting and failing to produce urine and unsanitary operating rooms. Amidst an uproar over the ethics of animal research and an argument about whether or not UW should be participating in animal research, focus has drifted from what really plagues the UW animal research programs, namely a lack of oversight.
Wisconsin may end up being the only state in the union that fails to adopt the changes in IRA conversion law made by the federal Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 (TIPRA). The law removes the adjusted gross income limitation on people who want to convert their traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs (it was previously $100,000). Traditional IRAs allow contributions of untaxed income but disbursements on them are taxed and are required starting at age seventy and a half. Roth IRA contributions have already been taxed but do not tax disbursements and do not ever mandate them (this is significant in terms of estate planning because the money could continue to grow tax free over the lifetime of a beneficiary, unlike with traditional IRAs). It gets much more complicated than this for individual situations but in general, a person would want to convert to a Roth IRA if he or she anticipated being at a higher tax rate in the future than today.
Perhaps it's just my status as a perpetual political junkie, but I can't help but complain about the absence of a noticeable gubernatorial race in this state. As the capital and second largest city in Wisconsin, we should expect more activity in Madison from the major candidates for governor. Recently, I haven't heard anything besides fundraising pleas from Democrat Tom Barrett or Republican Scott Walker.
The Multi-Cultural Student Coalition is an alliance of students deeply committed to social justice and the principles of exclusivity, integrity, responsibility and respect. Naturally, we find that it is our duty to serve as an ""umbrella organization"" to provide a voice for students who relate to our mission. What makes this so beautiful is the variety of individuals who are able to find characteristics within themselves to identify with MCSC's qualities. We are unique in the sense that we do not allow our differences to tear us apart, but instead to unite us. MCSC has decided to indulge in the opportunity to provide our united expressions via this regularly-printed column. We are student representatives of a collective, an organization that embodies the viewpoints of our mission's followers.
If you haven't heard the term ""green"" within the past few years, it's likely you've been living under a rock. The green movement has become a nationwide cause, endorsed by countless celebrities and philanthropists. Even large-scale companies have started making ""green"" products or using renewable energies, all steps toward reducing the effects of global warming in our immediate future. Organics have also become a huge player in the movement. Organic food, clothing and even cleaning products have slowly started to work their way into the American home, despite their higher costs. But is the higher price worth the benefits?
Today is the time to mine the Internet for higher education resources. Just recently, California passed a law requiring that all college textbooks be available in electronic form by 2020. Some institutions have taken steps no less progressive. MIT, for example, has successfully run its OpenCourseWare (OCW) project for eight years, injecting a rare dose of philanthropy into higher education. By offering its course content online for free, MIT initiated the noble cause of open course projects. Many top universities, including Yale and Carnegie Mellon, have since joined the party. However, ideas to take the project further are somewhat more controversial.
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