Opinion

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Space tourism proves one giant leap too far

Last Friday, Michael Alsbury, a pilot flying a test run for a Virgin Galactic spaceship, lost his life when the spaceship crashed on its California test site.  In addition to the tragedy of Alsbury’s death, this crash could also be an early deathblow to the fledgling space tourism industry. Virigin Galactic has been one of the top contributors to advancing the front of space tourism.  While the company and founder, Richard Branson will have some difficult lessons to learn concerning the failed crash, some of which may involve listening to advisers who told them the ship was not ready for testing, perhaps we can all learn a lesson from the unfullfiled hype that the crash has imposed upon those who were excited for the potential of space tourism.

Snapchat account shows student life at UW

Fighting sexism requires vigilance

Less than a week from today, our state could elect its first female governor.  It would come two years after we elected someone who had been the state’s first congresswoman to be the first woman to serve Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate.  Beyond that, two years from next Tuesday the country as a whole may, for the first time, put a woman in the White House.  What an extraordinary set of accomplishments for those women, and for the country itself.  While the prospect of these electoral victories excites me, there is one result that may accompany them that has me worried.

Comic: Midterm Democrats and President Obama

Letter to the editor: Women must negotiate salaries, can’t wait for karma

Evidently, only men are supposed to ask for raises. Women who do will only annoy their bosses and instead should simply have faith in the system and hope for good karma. This is what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently stated. Although he later apologized for his “inarticulate” response, the fact remains that his initial answer serves to mask the tremendous gender wage gap that still exists. It also reinforces dangerous beliefs about workplace communication, which research has found already differs in ways that generally disadvantage female workers.

Letter to the editor: Turn out for what? Tuition prices

On November 4th we are given the opportunity to vote in the mid-term elections.  As students, we can choose to refrain from voting and allow others to make election decisions for us, or we can choose to exercise our ability to vote and actually play a decision- making role in our own futures.  Your vote is your voice. It is your opportunity to influence the future. Regardless of where your political values lie, your vote strengthens the student voice which much too often gets ignored.  The more student voters, the more representation students get. Together, we can change the statistic that our age group has one of the lowest voter turnouts. Together, we can strengthen the student voice. 

Complaining helps contribute to our everyday interactions

It is the start of another week. You groan as you crawl out of your bed and moan as you slide into your first lecture of the week, which happens to be an 8 a.m. As you attempt to stimulate conversation with the other “Monday haters” around, you word vomit all the complaints in your head. 

Cartoon inspires viewer critical thinking

Rick and Morty” is a new and popular show from Adult Swim that real cartoon and science fans should view. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has already rated it a 9.2 and ranked it as the 11th- best TV show of all time, putting it in the company of “Breaking Bad” and “The Sopranos.” All this success has come after only one season, which aired its pilot in December 2013. 

Letter To The Editor: Football continues to set poor example of moral character in society

Letter To The Editor: Water pollution poses huge domestic environmental threat

UW needs to expand weak certificate offerings

When I was navigating the majors fair this past Wednesday I was very impressed by the sheer breadth of majors that our university offers across many fields and disciplines.  It truly is encouraging to know that I have the option to make many different areas my main focus during my time here.  What was discouraging however was the “no” I received when I would walk up to many tables and ask if they offered a certificate in their department. 

Cardinal View: Do not stop at police body cameras

In the new millennium, we can watch a police officer kill a citizen as easily as we can start a Netflix trial. These past few years of headlines, from Florida to Ferguson and beyond, have served as an archival of wrongdoing: a grandparent being beaten into the soil, black children being shot down in their neighborhoods, peaceful protestors swallowing tear gas in the night. America has swallowed its tax dollars into a whirlpool of distrust, time and again, leaving citizens clamoring for relief from the ailment of a system they can no longer trust.

Unions left high and dry in November election talk

On the issues section of her website, Mary Burke uses the phrase collective bargaining, or some version of it, twice, and both of those fall inside the same paragraph.  Does this seem weird to anybody?  Shouldn’t the Democratic candidate who is running against, arguably, one of the country’s least union-friendly governors be making this a bigger deal.  Since her victory in the primary, I’ve been waiting for Burke to become more salient on this topic, but so far that hasn’t happened.  It’s like I’m pretty sure that I’m at my surprise birthday party, but I’ve been here for 45 minutes and no one has said surprise yet, or even happy birthday.  So, either this is an incredibly long pause for effect, or all of my friends forgot about my birthday.  In other words, I think Mary Burke forgot about my birthday.

Mandatory paid vacation lacking in U.S.

The term “work-life balance” has become popular worldwide in recent years. The idea of work-leisure balance was invented in the mid-1800s, and the term work-life balance was firstly used in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s.

Foreign surrogacy births problems, not solutions

It is quite evident that we now live in a world of advanced technologies. One of the technological glooms of today is the use of surrogacy which is the practice of using another woman to carry the baby instead of the actual parents through implantation of their embryo into her. Many of us are already aware of this technology as Hollywood celebrity Sarah Jessica Parker was widely known for using a surrogate mother for the birth of her twin daughters back in 2009. But surrogacy is increasingly becoming more controversial in developing nations as it is commercialized without proper law enforcement to prevent abuses like here.

Ebola spread prevention needs to be an apolitical issue

Writer's block requires creative adaption

College Republicans are wrong on women for Walker

Last week, the College Republicans wrote an article in The Badger Herald urging the females of this campus to vote for incumbent Gov. Scott Walker, and gave several reasons therein.  While I found the piece to be wildly entertaining, there were a couple aspects that particularly caught my eye.  The two claims that I found to be especially questionable posited that Walker was both fighting to make abortion safer for women and working to help them become financially independent.  If both of those seem ridiculous at first glance, then you have a fairly astute first glance, because that’s exactly what they are.

Streaming buffers into the future of TV

Given the staggering level of popularity achieved by online streaming sites in recent years and the incredible amount of wide spread praise for these sites’ original content, I think it’s safe to say the era of streaming is upon us. At this point it would feel trite to expound the acclaim afforded to original shows like “Orange Is the New Black” or “Transparent” as evidence of the dominance of streaming, so here I would like to consider streaming in the context of the larger television landscape. The meteoric rise of streaming has ramifications for a medium it doesn’t even technically inhabit-— and the ripples across the greater television ocean set off by the success of streaming will undoubtedly be felt for years to come. Through its time-shifted model and original programming unencumbered by the barriers faced by network television, streaming sites are in the process of redefining television norms and conventions while putting pressure on traditional networks to do the same. In short, streaming is reshaping television for the better.

Relying on warfare to fix Middle Eastern Turmoil remains foolhardy