Certain urban environments are more likely to foster new relationships than others according to the study conducted by Nerdwallet, a personal finance and credit card comparison website.

The site found Boston’s offering of affordable dates, multiple places to meet people and a higher percentage of single women the ideal situation for the single man.

The Hub came in first ahead of Baltimore, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Denver, Fort Worth, Texas, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and Indianapolis, in that order. The study did not name the worst cities for single men.

The study was conducted by looking at the number of unmarried men per 100 unmarried women, the number of bars and gyms per 1,000 residents, the cost of a date and the unemployment rate of the city. The number of unmarried men per 100 unmarried women was weighted twice as much as the other measures.

Boston’s first-place ranking resulted from unmarried women outranking unmarried men, a variety of date options and a relatively low unemployment rate, at 7.1 percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A handful of men said they were not surprised by the study’s findings, attesting to dating successes in Beantown.

Jacob Liman, 34, a resident of Somerville, said he has lived in the Boston area for more than ten years and met his current girlfriend here.

“I guess that sounds pretty accurate,” he said of the study. “I met my girlfriend here and when we first started dating, we had a lot of fun going out to different places in the city.”

Harry Klien, 29, a resident of Brighton said that he was happy with his dating life here in the city.

“I’ve dated a couple girls since I’ve lived here,” he said. “And yeah, I guess it was pretty easy to meet people. The bar scene really helps with that.”

Sixty-two-year-old Jeff Bullock, a resident of Boston, said he was was amused by the study.

“I have been divorced for several years so I’m not really sure how much this applies to me,” he said. “But hey, you know maybe that means there is still hope for me!”

Before the announcement the crowd sang, danced and chanted “Phil, Phil, Phil” in anticipation of his arrival as snow flurries fell on the crowd. Fireworks lit the early-morning sky a half-hour before the big prediction. Many were dressed in groundhog hats, and a few wore full groundhog costumes.

This year marked the 127th celebration of the event in the small Pennsylvania town that lies about 70 miles west of State College.

Penn State alumnus and State College resident Patrick Laninger said the ride was worth it, even with cold temperatures.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience just to see it,” Laninger said. “It was definitely worth it.”

The legend goes that if Phil sees his shadow as he emerges at dawn on Feb. 2 then six more weeks of winter are ahead. But since he did not see his shadow Saturday, the predication is that spring is just around the corner.

Butch Philliber, iceman of the Punxsutawney Groundhogs Club Inner Circle, a group of 15 residents whose mission is to promote the legend of Punxsutawney Phil and the Punxsutawney Borough, said that after the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” the crowds grew 20 times.

“It’s really kind of an adult Christmas,” Philliber said. “Because these adults are standing here in the cold bouncing around with childlike enthusiasm, waiting for Phil to come out an see his shadow.”

Philliber said that the crowd is typically made up of people from around the state and country who want to check it off their bucket list.

Some came from even farther such as Tanya Surtees of Cape Town, South Africa who said she had never experienced such cold weather before.

“I have never seen cold like this in my life, but I just love the vibe — everybody is just out to have a good time. I just think it is really cool,” Surtees said.

“Django Unchained” explores the possible history of a fictional slave named Django who attempts to free his wife from the plantation of a wealthy slaveholder. In presentation, the film has been likened to spaghetti-westerns of the mid-1960s by Telegraph reviewer Jenny McCartney, and is punctuated by numerous scenes of extreme violence. Tarantino defends these moments, telling an audience at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts that the reality of American slavery was “incredibly shocking” and much worse than anything depicted on film.

“Unchained” has been nominated for five Academy Awards and received critical and commercial success, becoming Tarantino’s highest-grossing movie, with a box office rake of $130 million. It is this success which prompted NECA to take interest in making collectible dolls fashioned after prominent characters in the movie. Of the six-doll set, one depicts Candie, a cruel slave owner who forces his male slaves to fight one another to the death for sport. Another doll is Stephen, a house slave played by actor Samuel L. Jackson, who called his character “the most despised Negro in cinematic history.”

With news that NECA was discontinuing their line of “Unchained” collectibles, owners immediately began putting the dolls on market sites like Amazon and eBay, with prices often tripling their original value. Already, an “Unchained” doll which initially sold for $39.99 fetched over $400 in an eBay auction, while a complete set has sold for $2,000.

“I’m not surprised at all,” said Krystal Moore, an employee at The Great Escape, a comic and collectible store located on Bardstown Road that specializes in a wide variety of pop-culture items and memorabilia. “We had customers asking for them even before this. When people start hearing that items are rare, the prices will skyrocket.”

On Jan. 25, the dolls were pulled from eBay on the grounds that it violated their offensive-materials policy, which prohibits products that “promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance, or promote organizations with such views.”

NECA has previously made collectible dolls for other Tarantino films, such as the 2009 World War II fantasy, “Inglorious Basterds.”

Caroline Stone compared hashtags to parentheses.

“If we’re talking about writing … I would say this is honestly like a new type of punctuation,” said the 29-year-old U. Florida doctoral student in media studies. She said when one writes and uses parentheses, it’s used as a side thought.

“The hashtag, for a lot of young people, is used that way,” Stone said.

“Hashtag” was voted as the word of the year during the American Dialect Society annual voting session earlier this month.

“From a societal and cultural standpoint, I think it’s a perfect word of the year,” said UF journalism instructor Steve Johnson. “It represents more than just a single word.”

The first high-profile hashtag appeared on Twitter in 2007, according to the Poynter Institute website, and categorizes for the dual function of filtering and searching.

Daniel Harrison, a 19-year-old UF mechanical engineering freshman, disagreed with the ranking of “hashtag” as word of the year.

“I really don’t think it’s the word of the year — maybe the word of 2010. It’s a little late to the game,” he said. “YOLO should have been the word of the year because it blew up and died down in 2012.”

The word of the year does not have to be brand-new, but it has to be newly prominent in the past year, according to the American Dialect Society’s website.

Word of the year runners-up included YOLO, fiscal cliff, Gangnam style and marriage equality.

Pryer paid homage to the musician and pop icon Lady Gaga when she reclassified 19 species into a new genus—Gaga. Pryer noticed that these ferns were distinct from species within the Cheilanthes genus, in which they were originally classified. Realizing that the 19 ferns could not be categorized under another, already existing genus, Pryer created the Gaga genus, which was inspired by her admiration for Lady Gaga and her Born This Way Foundation, which seeks to empower victims of bullying and create a more accepting society.

“We need more human beings who are interested in making the world a kinder, better, braver place,” Pryer said. “She’s trying to give people the skills and the strength to go past the bullying…. That’s awesome. I don’t see myself naming a genus of ferns after Britney Spears or Madonna.”

Found in Arizona, Central and South America, Mexico and Texas, the Gaga genus includes two new species of ferns—Gaga monstraparva and Gaga germanotta. Monstraparva is the Latin translation for little monsters, the name given to Lady Gaga fans. The other species honors the singer directly—her birth name is Stefani Germanotta.

Pryer said Lady Gaga has long been an inspiration because she uses her stardom to “push agendas” that empower others. In addition to the Born This Way Foundation, Lady Gaga launched the Body Revolution to encourage fans not to be ashamed of their image after the media criticized Gaga for her weight gain.

“It’s a way of giving her a gift from the scientific community and saying, ‘Even geeks listen to your music and feel empowered by your message—keep doing what you’re doing,’” Pryer said.

Lady Gaga’s outfit for her performance at the 2010 Grammy Awards, moreover, made the new genus’ namesake more appropriate, Pryer added. Made by Armani Prive, the costume was green, heart-shaped and, to Pryer, resembled a gametophyte—the multicellular phase of plants that occurs during the ferns’ reproductive stage.

“When she came out of that silo wearing that costume, it just spoke to me,” Pryer said. “It was like, ‘Good god! For all the world, that was a beautiful gametophyte.’”

Many artists have had scientific discoveries named after them. In January, for instance, the singer Beyonce became the namesake of a horsefly with a striking gold behind, deemed “bootylicious” by its discoverer Bryan Lessard, a researcher for the Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

To top it all off, when Pryer’s lab looked at the DNA sequence of the ferns, they found that one gene had the sequence Guanine-Adenine-Guanine-Adenine lined up, which, when abbreviated, is GAGA.

Pryer had not thought of looking at the DNA sequence until she talked to Karl Bates, director of research communications, over lunch about the fern discovery. Bates said it would be funny if she looked at the DNA sequence and saw GAGA lined up, so Pryer and her lab set to work to see if Gaga was, in fact, in the ferns’ DNA. The study’s acknowledgement section now thanks Bates for “stating the obvious.”

After seeing the connections to the namesake, Pryer wanted to make sure she cleared it with the person behind the inspiration. She did not want the name to be released without Lady Gaga formally “blessing” the name. She got help in this task from Cathy Davidson, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute professor of interdisciplinary studies and Ruth F. Devarney professor of English.

Davidson is co-director of the annual Digital Media and Learning Competition run by the MacArthur Foundation, which awards money to projects that explore how digital media affect the lives of young people. She worked with Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter, when the MacArthur Foundation chose to give a $500,000 grant to the Born This Way Foundation in February. Using her connection with the MacArthur Foundation, Davidson contacted Carter about the Lady Gaga-inspired genus name and received a response in 19 minutes.

“Sounds great :),” Carter wrote in the email.

Duke senior Anne Johnson, who has worked in Pryer’s lab since her sophomore year, said she liked the reasoning behind the genus name choice and was excited as a Lady Gaga fan.

Davidson noted that the name choice not only honors Lady Gaga’s work, but also shines light on the scientific community and their contributions.

“It shows that the world of science, art, university and pop culture is all continuous—I love that,” she said. “I don’t like when the world gets divided up into little boxes.”

Pryer also noted that the excitement surrounding the Gaga genus shows that scientists are approachable and enjoy having fun.

“I hope people will see scientists aren’t just lab-coated, boring people—we live in the same world,” Pryer said. “We owe it to the community at large to explain what we do… and maybe there are little monsters who were born this way to be fern biologists.”

“Tebowing” is now trademarked.

New York Jets backup quarterback and former Gator Tim Tebow was granted the rights for the down-on-one-knee praying position earlier this month. In an ESPN article, Tebow said he intends to control the use of the term and meaning behind it rather than to gain financially.

Richard J. Lutz, U. Florida marketing professor, said a trademark is the only way for Tebow to legally control the term, especially because others have attempted to obtain the rights for commercial purposes in the past.

“Obviously, it’s a huge phenomenon,” Lutz said.

He said without full trademark rights, perversions of the term are possible and could reflect badly on Tebow.

“People don’t know who owns what,” Lutz said. “If they see ‘Tebow,’ then they think it’s Tebow.”

Steve Russell, sports director at WRUF radio, said some fans admire Tebow not only because he is a football player, but also because of his principles.

“If you’re looking at it from Tim’s perspective, he’s trying to protect what he feels it represents, and from his perspective, I certainly understand it,” Russell said.

However, it may be difficult to enforce the trademark among Gators fans, Russell said, and it may hurt average fans who do the “Tebowing” move as a way to pay homage.

Rebisi Owhonda, a 19-year-old biology sophomore, said he thinks the trademark will affect the presence of “Tebowing” on social media sites.

“It’s going to be a harm, because people can’t actively and openly use it anymore,” he said.

“Tebowing” could be used to sell hats and T-shirts, toy guns and pantyhose, according to an ESPN article.

Tebow told ESPN the money from those sales would eventually go to the Tim Tebow Foundation. Russell said it is no surprise to him that Tebow wants to donate the funds.

“Knowing Tim, I think that was important to him — that if there was any profit to be made, so to speak, the money would go to his foundation,” he said.

Lutz said the trademark could have a similar effect to the scriptures Tebow wore under his eyes during many Gators games. People might see the term and want to find out its meaning, which could be exactly what Tebow wants.

“I think most people would look at what he’s doing and say he has the right to do that,” Lutz said. “It’s his name.”

The advertisement read, “Howdy Gainesville: You’ve been annexed by Aggie Nation. The Best Academics & Cleanest Program in the SEC. WHOOP! Real Football. Real Tradition.” It caught the attention of several national media outlets, including USA Today, ESPN and Yahoo! Sports.

The Gators will play the Aggies in their first matchup Saturday in College Station, Texas.

Jason Cook, vice president for marketing and communications at Texas A&M, said the university has no idea where the billboard came from.

“The billboard was not placed by Texas A&M University and is certainly not reflective of how we’ve handled our transition into the SEC to date,” he said.

Cook said the university is “aggressively” investigating the advertisement.

A Houston-based media company purchased the billboard on behalf of “Aggie Nation,” said Jim Cullinan, vice president of marketing and communications for Clear Channel Outdoor. Clear Channel Outdoor owns the billboard structure.

Cook said that at 3 p.m. Tuesday, Texas A&M requested the company remove the ad due to trademark infringement concerns. Clear Channel Outdoor removed the ad later that day.

Although the buyers’ identities remain unknown, Cook said the ad’s word choice will help narrow down potential leads.

“The use of the phrase ‘Aggie Nation’ sends a strong indication that whoever placed this billboard is not affiliated or connected with the university,” he said.

Texas A&M doesn’t usually use the term “Aggie Nation” to refer to its students and alumni, Cook said. It says “Aggie Network” or “the 12th Man.”

The billboard may have upset some Gator fans, but UF officials aren’t too concerned.

“I think this is some good-spirited ribbing, and we’ll see how things turn out on Saturday,” UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes said.

Rick Croft, owner of Texas Trailers across the street from the billboard, said a UF employee recently pointed out the ad to him.

The billboard may be the first public jab by Aggie fans in Gainesville, but Croft said he doesn’t believe it’s a big deal.

“I think it’s good to have a little rivalry,” he said. “I hope we go over there and kick their behinds.”

The AP — presumably accidentally — published a test story about a fictional UCLA/Oregon matchup that didn’t go the Ducks’ way.

“PASADENA, Calif. – Bob Jones threw three touchdown passes, including the game-winner with 10 seconds left, as UCLA stunned Oregon 21-20 on Saturday night,” the story reads. Many news outlets that automatically collate and send out AP news online published the story, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. UCLA and Oregon won’t play each other in the regular season but could conceivably meet in the Pac-12 Championship Game, like they did last December when Oregon won 49-31 en route to a Rose Bowl berth.

A Google search for “Bruins stun Oregon,’ the faux-story’s headline, yielded more than 1,300 hits by 3:30 p.m.

“I’m Shmacked” is a film company that aims to document weekend experiences at the “top party schools” across the country.

“We want to capture an unprecedented documentary on college life,” said “I’m Shmacked” cofounder Arya Toufanian. “This is happening on campuses all over, and we believe it needs to be documented.”

Recently named the “Top Party School” by both The Daily Beast and The Princeton Review, Toufanian, a junior at The George Washington U., said the “I’m Shmacked” crew enjoys the “party school” atmosphere WVU provides.

FallFest marked the company’s fourth trip to Morgantown.

“We love the atmosphere here and really appreciate WVU,” he said. “We really love it here.”

The company’s previous Saint Patrick’s Day film, which was released in March, sparked much controversy at WVU.

During St. Patrick’s Day weekend, 36 malicious fires were set and Morgantown police issued four controlled substance violations, four DUIs, four underage possessions, 41 open container and public consumption citations, 30 underage consumptions and four nuisance party citations.

University spokeswoman Becky Lofstead said the film company would not be welcome on campus – including Greek housing.

“They are certainly not welcome anywhere on campus, and any attempt to film is off limits,” she said.

Lofstead said she believes the “party school” reputation given to the University is misleading.

“Most people view WVU as a positive place and don’t appreciate this misleading image. You look at these ‘top party school’ lists, and it’s clear that many of the schools that are ranked as ‘party schools’ are also ranked high academically.”

In an official statement following the Princeton Review’s recent ranking, the University said, “In the big picture, clearly this list has no real credibility. As always, we focus on celebrating and supporting WVU’s long history of academic achievements. Our students, faculty, alumni, parents and friends have made it clear that is their focus, as well.”

WVU Student Government Association Board of Governors member Ryan Campione said he believes illegal behavior, such as what was portrayed in the St. Patrick’s Day film, is highly unacceptable for all students.

“Regardless of how you view the laws, or what you think they should be, they are set for a reason,” he said. “There’s just no excuse for being proud of being captured on film doing illegal things.”

While University officials cast some blame on “I’m Shmacked” for the St. Patrick’s Day criminal activity, Toufanian said he disagrees.

“We don’t really introduce partying to these schools we film,” he said. “This is a common occurrence on any weekend. It’s just that a lot of schools brush it under the rug. But, we believe if it’s happening, why not document it? Schools should be proud of this.”

Toufanian said “I’m Shmacked” does not, however, advocate for excessive drinking and partying.

“It’s not that we are proud of drinking. But, if that’s what it’s like, then we should be proud of how we live,” he said.

Following the Saint Patrick’s Day film, “I’m Shmacked” returned to Morgantown for a show at Bent Willey’s during the week of final exams.

The show was empty; however, after a trip to the Downtown Campus Library, Toufanian said he was thrilled to see more students studying than at the show.

“It was really cool to walk out from an empty show and see the library full with students studying,” he said.

Campione said while he does believe students partying safely and in moderation is acceptable, labeling WVU as a “party school” is not an accurate representation of WVU students.

“Being a student is a 24-hour job; it’s OK to blow off some steam every once and a while,” he said. “But labeling the entire University as a ‘party school’ is an unfair representation. We have a lot of hardworking students here. Not everyone is out partying all the time.”

Wal-Mart selected singer/rapper/entrepreneur/all-around real-good-time-haver Pitbull to represent their brand. The rapper has numerous endorsement deals – this particular contest was brought about by his association with Sheets Energy Strips.

But then the Internet happened. Boston Globe writer David Thorpe led a campaign to exile the rapper to what has to be the most secluded Wal-Mart in the world – a store on Alaska’s Aleut Island, in the town of Kodiak. The town’s population is a little more than 6,000.

Thorpe’s campaign worked, with the Kodiak store receiving more than 70,000 likes, one of them being yours truly. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s almost 12 times the population of the town. The store was announced as the winner of the contest on July 15.

Being the upstanding gentleman he is, Pitbull obliged, releasing a video stating he will, “go anywhere in the world for my fans.” Pit has scheduled a promotional appearance in Kodiak on Sunday, July 29, with a show likely to follow.

It will be the rapper’s first performance in Alaska.

In the video, Pitbull addressed Thorpe, referring to him as “someone that thinks he was playing a prank.” He also invited him to come to the show, because Pitbull loves talking to his haters.

I almost feel bad for my dog, Pitbull. Either he simply doesn’t understand that most people voted as a joke, or he knows the whole thing is a farce but must keep a straight face to appease Wal-Mart and Sheets.

As funny as Thorpe’s campaign is on the surface, I have to respect the underlying reason for his desire to exile Pitbull. The rapper has endlessly plugged products in his music and videos. He’s turned himself into a walking billboard – a living, breathing platform for companies to push their brands.

The problem is, unlike product placement within a movie, Pitbull has done this at the expense of the music. His songs, such as “Give Me Everything” and “Vida 23 (featured in the infamous ‘Real Good Time’ commercial),” have poorly-constructed lines that were written only to advertise for Kodak and Dr Pepper, respectively. Not that the rest of Pit’s music is better than either of those songs, but it’s the thought of a song being sold as advertising space that’s disconcerting.

Surprisingly, Pitbull is upfront about his approach to music. He told Billboard magazine, “This is called the music business. It’s 90 percent business, 10 percent talent. There is no genius to what I do.”

For a guy who takes himself seriously in a dance party commercial for Dr Pepper, an honest confession such as this is impressive.

While I wholeheartedly supported Thorpe’s campaign, one must admire Pitbull for becoming as popular as he has.

When he stepped on the scene eight years ago, would anyone have guessed he would one day be selling out concerts across the world while singing about everyone’s favorite 23 flavors?

Sadly, Pit may represent the future of pop music.

Advertisements are everywhere these days, and music, or at least songwriting, is one of the last territories they’ve inhabited. Other artists may start modeling themselves off of Pitbull, getting rich by branding themselves like a company, not by selling albums.

But for now, let’s just enjoy the fact that we, the Internet, have outsmarted not only one of the world’s biggest chain stores, but one of the most annoying, omnipresent celebrities out there today. So grab a Dr Pepper and savor this moment, because I say a victory like that calls for a real good time.

Founding member of TN and over 20 year veteran of naturism, Paul LeValley clarifies the difference in naturism and nudism.

“Naturists are attuned to nature, and focus on being at one with nature,” LeValley said. “This is very much a back to nature club. There are fancy resorts that call themselves nudists. So we fit the naturist definition a little better.”

Florida State U. boasts the only collegiate naturist club in the nation, aptly named Naturally FSU. The club is likely known best for its full-moon skinny dips in Suntan Lake during the warmer months, which attract many curious college students. Naturally FSU derives its name from its parent organization, Tallahassee Naturally, which is the local naturist community founded in the ’80s.

Ron Georgalis, a graduate student studying anthropology and the president of Naturally FSU spoke of the intrinsic connection between Naturally FSU and TN.

“Membership overlaps and the two organizations are not mutually exclusive in away way,” Georgalis said. “Tallahassee Naturally is the community group, and we’re an arm of Tallahassee Naturally. We are independent, but we also use the property that they rent and have events together.”

Bonding over the common exhilaration of returning to nature in its most literal sense, TN members of the North Florida-South Georgia naturist community gathered on Sunday, July 15 to celebrate National Nude Weekend during which the organization hosts their annual Open House.

The Open House event intentionally had staggered degrees of dress: from 10 to 11 a.m., all participants were clothed, between 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., clothing was optional and from 1 to 4 p.m., the dress code changed to completely nude.

Anyone was welcome to attend the Open House; however, the event was specifically designed to give TN members the opportunity to speak to candidates running for public office. (The politicians did not stay after 11 a.m., which is when the clothing-optional dress code took effect.) While tan lines aren’t a concern for the naturist set, matters of privacy and freedoms are.

TN’s Paul LeValley, who is the Chair of the Political Committee, extended invitations to several candidates, including Mark Schlakman. Schlakman is the Democratic candidate for Florida’s 2nd Congressional District, who also holds the position of senior program director Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at FSU.

Schlakman’s expertise in the areas of politics and human rights made him the ideal guest for an organization so concerned with legal free expression.

“I respect the issues here,” Schlakman said. “Being at the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at FSU, the issues here resonate in terms of privacy interests and exercising their freedoms, rights, and liberties without encroaching upon others.”

Located about 30 miles east of Tallahassee in Jefferson County, TN rents a 40-acre plot of wooded, secluded land (which includes a private lake) where naturists are free to be comfortably nude while avoiding voyeurs and the public eye. The organizations are considerate of others in that TN and Naturally FSU go 30 miles or more out of their way not to offend the public.

“I think that appropriate notice and discretion [is important],” Schlakman said. “It’s not that people are trying to foist their preferences upon anyone else. It’s just to freely exercise rights while providing appropriate notice so that people aren’t offended. It makes perfect sense.”

Open House is one of Tallahassee Naturally’s clothed events, but Georgalis oversees two nude events that college students are encouraged to participate in. The first is the Full-Moon Skinny-Dip which is usually scheduled for the Friday nearest the full moon from months April to October. Students can take a shuttle out to Suntan Lake at 7 p.m. and take a dip in the lake’s blue waters in the light of the moon.

The second event Georgalis described was the ancient pentathlon, which is based on the original Greek Olympic Games. It closely resembles what the games would have actually been like because all contestants and even spectators must be fully nude to participate. TN’s pentathlon events include javelin, discus, 200-meter dash, long-jump, and others. Men and women compete separately and according to age and skill-level.

The games promote sportsmanship and Georgalis encourages FSU students to experience the good-natured atmosphere for themselves.

“There’s something primally gratifying about [naturism].” Georgalis said. “I think everybody should experience something wild and unruly every now and then.”

“[The Department of Public Safety] is currently investigating this. Breaking into this area and removing the clock hands involves serious violations and safety concerns,” she wrote in an email.

A longstanding Georgetown tradition, the Healy clock hands were last stolen in 2005 by Andrew Hamblen and Wyatt Gjullin.

University endocrinologist Mary Lee Vance and University neurosurgeon Jason Sheehan treated 8-foot-3 Turk Sultan Kosen in 2010.

Kosen had previously been diagnosed with acromegaly, a disease in which the patient suffers excessive growth, caused by a pituitary tumor. The tumor spiked the amount of growth hormone Kosen’s body produced, which led to his gigantism, according to the statement.

Vance said the Discovery Channel contacted her in May 2010 and asked her to appear on one of the network’s programs, right before Kosen came to the University for treatment.

“We’re a very large center for referral for patients with pituitary gland problems,” Vance said.

Vance gave Kosen new medication designed to control the production of the growth hormone and to stop his growth in May 2010. The tumor, however, had spread into Kosen’s brain and he had to return to the Medical Center in August 2010, Vance said.

Sheehan then performed radiosurgery on Kosen using a Gamma Knife, which Vance said is a “one-time focused radiation treatment,” which halts the spread of the tumor.

“The treatments that we provided at the University of Virginia have stopped the production of his excess growth hormone and stopped the growth of the tumor itself,” Sheehan said in the statement.

Kosen currently holds the 2012 Guinness World Record for tallest man.

Rethink possible.

This year’s South by Southwest festival is doing just that. The annual music, film and interactive conference, running through March 18, started off with the long-anticipated premiere of “The Cabin in the Woods,” a film by Joss Whedon set to be released in April 2012, and the release and performance of Andrew Bird’s new album, “Break It Yourself.” But the festival has been overshadowed by controversy surrounding British marketing firm Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s use of the homeless from around the country as mobile 4G hotspots.

Multiple homeless men wander the conference floor wearing T-shirts that say “I’m ___, a 4G hotspot,” followed by a number to text if you want to use PayPal to pay for Internet access. They carry the physical hotspot in their pockets and have a set location to stay around.

The service immediately sparked debates all over the Internet. The New York Times’ David Gallagher called the plan “a little dystopian,” and a quick Twitter search for #homelesshotspots found several people on both sides of the argument.

Until BBH reveals malicious intentions, I’m behind its message.

A knee-jerk reaction would consider how horrifying it is that these poor people are being used as objects, and aren’t they?

Saneel Radia, head of innovation at BBH New York, is aware of these concerns, and spoke to news-aggregate website BuzzFeed about the issues.

“The worry is that these people are suddenly just hardware, but frankly, I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t believe otherwise,” he said.

That’s a fair point, and I hope no one would treat other humans as hardware. After all, the homeless do get compensated for their work. All proceeds from paying for Internet access go toward that person’s salary.

So it can’t be all bad, right? It’s like an updated version of Street Newspapers, print publications written and sold by the homeless as a form of self-employment.

A job is a job.

Ohio native Melvin, a “Homeless Hotspot,” doesn’t mind the job. He told BuzzFeed that “these people are trying to help the homeless and increase awareness. They’re trying not to put us in a situation where we’re stereotyped.”

Melvin also liked how he gets to talk to people and, perhaps, give them an inside view of homelessness.

It’s a complex issue. On one hand, the homeless are given jobs and income, and this could be the first step toward reintegration in society. On the other hand, BBH could be using this program as an advertisement for its own services and not really care about the well-being of the homeless.

But is it that big of an issue if BBH gets publicity out of this? The Homeless Hotspots website says all donations go directly to whomever sells the access.

Is it unorthodox? Yes. Dystopian? Maybe not. Odd though it may be, these people are given jobs and an income while they work for BBH. That’s money to buy food, clothes and other necessities.

The homeless have long been glossed over on the streets by some.

Maybe now they’ll start paying attention.

The babyccino, a pint-sized decaffinated coffee or steamed milk drink intended for toddlers and children, is the latest coffee craze to sweep upscale Brooklyn neighborhoods.

The idea for the drink was born in Australia and has recently become popular in coffee shops throughout Park Slope and Fort Greene.

A small coffee shop in Park Slope, Café Regular, serves steamed milk-only versions of the beverage for a dollar a pop.

Most Brooklyn coffee shops are reluctant to serve coffee versions of the drink to children after several negative reports on the trend. Parents and experts generally agree that coffee should be reserved for adults.

“Growing children should not be drinking coffee as it can stunt growth,” said Lisa Young, an adjunct nutrition professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. “I suggest they stick to milk drinks and keep it low fat.”

Bittersweet, a cafe in Fort Greene, serves milk-only babyccinos in espresso cups.

“We started getting a lot of flack from [the press],” Bittersweet manager Ryan Hess said. “They cited us as instigating this whole thing where everyone thought we were giving caffeine to kids, like we had some evil plan to caffeinate children or something, which is not true at all. There isn’t any coffee in at all, it’s just steamed milk.”

Root Hill Café, which is on the border of Park Slope and Gowanus, was also accused of serving coffee to children.

“It’s crazy, we never heard of [babyccinos] before this whole thing,” co-owner Michelle Giancola said of the press Root Hill received.

Giancola said the cafe rarely gets requests for babyccinos, but would serve any type of drink a customer asks for.

“If someone comes in and asks us for something and we can do it, we do it,” she said. “What they do with it once we make it is up to them.”

Whether or not the drinks contain caffeine, some baristas say the idea of toddlers consuming coffee-inspired drinks is pretentious.

“I think there’s always this air of pretention that comes with coffee,” Hess said. “But it’s funny and the kids want it. There are a lot of families that live in this neighborhood. I think it’s pretty adorable.”

Colbert condemned KU Medical Center researcher Joseph Tash for his research in developing a male birth control pill, 50 years after birth control was made available to women.

“Folks, this is dangerous. If birth control becomes widely available to men, they might want to have a lot of sex,” Colbert said. “That’s why I’m a wag of my finger to the spermacidal maniacs at the University of Kansas who developed this pill.”

According to the KU Medical Center Tash’s research is aimed at developing at compound that acts as a chemical male contraceptive.

Colbert went on to cite presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s stance suggesting that birth control leads to more children being born out of wedlock, making a comparison to fire extinguishers causing fires.

With no pause in the contempt he released upon the prospect of male contraception, although he prefaced the wagging of his finger with a disclaimer.

“I never rush to judgment. I wake up early shower and shave, eat a full breakfast, then accuse you of being a horse molester,” Colbert said.

For any male wanting to use the pill, Colbert quickly suggested they should be forced to a have a trans urethral ultrasound. Though supposedly noninvasive, Colbert pulled out a big ultrasound wand for use at the end of the segment.

“You men will think twice about taking that pill, assuming you survive,” Colbert said.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is the landlord of several apartments located in Beaver Plaza, 222 W. Beaver Ave., State College, Penn., a finding that surprised many of the tenants, including Kane.

According to Santorum’s public financial disclosure form, he makes an income of $15,001 to $50,000 per apartment annually on rent and royalties from the residences.

Santorum is the landlord of five apartments in Beaver Plaza — 304, 306, 603, 604 and 610 — that have a net worth of $100,001 to $250,000 each.

Tenants of apartment 603 said they had no clue that Santorum, a Penn State alumnus and former Pennsylvania senator, was their landlord until recently.

PSU sophomores Lucy Barnhart and Kane had no idea who Santorum was — let alone that he was their landlord.

Another tenant of 603, sophomore Emma Martin knew who Santorum was but not that he was her landlord.

“I didn’t think that someone running for president would be the landlord of this small apartment in State College,” Martin said.

Martin’s opinion of Santorum has not changed since she learned that he was her landlord, as he is removed from day-to-day living in the complex, she said.

Associated Realty Property Management is the property manager of Beaver Plaza.

ARPM Property Manager Mark Bigatel said Santorum is one of the better owners and “always” updates the apartments.

“He takes such good care, because he is a real proud Penn State alumni,” Bigatel said.

Despite the initial surprise to find out who owned their residence — which Kane and her roommate are not living in next year — the idea that someone in the running to be Commander in Chief is their landlord does carry some novelty for them.

“That is definitely cool,” she said.

Snyder was not describing a frat house on a Saturday night or the mad dash for the ladies’ room during the intermission of a lengthy play. Instead, he was talking about his study, which took one afternoon, cost less than $2 and ultimately won him and his team a 2012 MSNBC Weird Science award. The study also caught the eye of the team of Nobel Laureates who determined the winners of the 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes, designed to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think,” according to their website.

Snyder’s research showed that the painful need to urinate causes levels of cognitive deterioration on par with staying awake for 24 consecutive hours or having a blood alcohol content level of 0.05, just shy of the legal limit for driving.

But Snyder did not set out to determine the effects of a full bladder. In order to test the effects of drugs on people’s mental capabilities, Snyder’s team was trying to design cognitive tests that would resist the “practice effect” — the improvement that subjects show after being tested multiple times in the same day.

But a test that avoids the practice effect still must be able to measure small changes in cognitive performance.

Using pain to affect cognition is an old idea, Snyder said, but his team was the first to ask people to withhold their urine. Snyder and his colleague, Paul Maruff, came up with this idea after realizing that “the urge to void” is not only painful but is also easily relieved and cheap, Snyder said. The entire study cost around $1.25, far less than the thousands of dollars his usual brain-imaging research requires.

Snyder and his team ran the study on eight individuals, who each drank 250 milliliters of water every 15 minutes until they reached their “breaking point,” where they could no longer hold their urine. As subjects’ self-reported pain levels increased, so too did their levels of cognitive impairment as measured by simple tasks on the computer that tested attention and working memory.

Snyder said the results reflect the anatomical organization of the underlying neural networks that are involved in modulating pain and sustaining concentration — two networks he said are close together.

Geert Crombez, a professor of health psychology at Ghent U. in Belgium who researches how pain affects cognition, described Snyder’s study as “weird, but fascinating” in an email to The Herald.

“It is in line with our theoretical model, which essentially states that there are some basic motives that demand urgent action,” he wrote. “These urges interrupt and call for additional attentional resources. They also need to be controlled at the expense of cognitive resources.”

The study’s results have real-world implications Snyder and his team did not anticipate. “We didn’t set out to really talk about the risk of driving when you really need to break to go to the bathroom,” he said. “Honestly, this didn’t occur to us, that it’s the same as drinking until you are too drunk to drive.”

Since publishing the study, he said he has heard from truck drivers who have experienced first-hand cognitive impairment from needing to pee. “At least three or four people who are either truck drivers themselves or are related to truck drivers have told me that they almost killed themselves because they weren’t paying attention when they had to go so badly,” he said.

Since winning the Ig Nobel Prize last year, Snyder has added a “Dubious Honors” section to his resume. “If you can’t laugh at what you do sometimes, then there’s a problem,” he said.

For example, it is illegal to carry wire cutters in your pocket in Austin. According to government professor David Prindle, this law dates back to when there was a controversy between landowners who preferred open ranges and those who wanted to keep their land closed off with barbed wire. Some in favor of open ranges went around cutting the barbed wire. It was difficult to determine who the criminal was, so by creating a law prohibiting wire cutters from being carried, this discretion was easily avoided.

“I suspect a lot of the weird laws are old,” Prindle said. “Some were certainly relevant at the time they were made. Though, there is one I remember that prohibited throwing onions, and I can’t imagine why that was necessary.”

Other laws seem crazy but are still enforceable. In Texas, if you and your partner socially refer to one another as husband and wife, you can be considered legally married.

This is known as a common law marriage. It simply requires an agreement between partners that they are married and living together. Not all states recognize and give the same rights to those in a common law marriage.

Law student Luis Soberon is interested in the law of adverse possession.

“In Texas, the law of adverse possession states that if you occupy someone else’s land for a certain amount of time and if you actually intended to dispossess the true owner, you get the land,” Soberon said. “Basically, it turns a trespasser into a legal owner, and in Texas, it’s like rewarding the wrongdoer.”

This law was tested last year in Flower Mound, Texas, when Kenneth Robinson moved into a $330,000 house that had been in foreclosure. He filled out the necessary paperwork, filed it with the Denton County courthouse and paid a mere $16 for the rights to the house.

“This dates back to the early 20th century when squatters were farming on land not owned by them,” Prindle said. “It passed because these squatters voted in favor of adverse possession.”

Then there are the shockingly strange incidents.

In 1971, the Texas Legislature passed a resolution honoring Albert de Salvo. Salvo murdered 13 women in the 1960s and was christened the “Boston Strangler.” According to Prindle, Representative Tom Moore Jr. introduced the resolution in order to prove his point that legislators regularly pass bills without fully reading them. His point was quickly proven.

Multimedia journalism senior Cameron Miculka found this particular incident humorous, but still relevant to current problems in the Texas Legislature.

“I think that the root of the problem is that legislators don’t read and research everything thoroughly because of the massive amount of legislation they receive,” Miculka said. “I understand that it is not feasible for legislators to read everything that passes by their desks, but I would hope that those elected would trust their staff enough to do research so that serial killers aren’t honored through legislation.”

In 1980, Corpus Christi residents voted in favor of a proposition that would lower the property tax ceiling and limit annual tax increases. The city’s response to this was to sue the residents, forcing the taxpayers to foot the bill for the lawsuit against themselves.

One thing you may not consider crazy is the Texas state flower being the bluebonnet, or the Texas state bird being the mockingbird, but if you’ve been referring to the plant eating lizard “Pleurocoelus altus” as the Texas state dinosaur, think again.

In 2007, Southern Methodist University paleontology graduate student Peter Rose examined the dinosaur’s fossil only to determine that it had never set foot in Texas. In 2009, the state dinosaur was changed to the “Paluxysaurus,” a species which was found in northern Texas.

So while Austin is certainly weird, you may want to extend that term to the entire state of Texas — or the laws at least.

Maxim named LSU the “sexiest college” in America in a list composed by the magazine’s staff.

Maxim, an international men’s magazine that’s known for its pictorials of scantily clad females, called LSU students “magna cum hotties.”

The list also highlighted Louisiana’s southern atmosphere, saying LSU’s football team is “king” and the state’s Cajun cuisine is abundant.

The Maxim staff found the most “titillating” people and things from across the country in an attempt to find what “our great land has to offer,” ranging from the sexiest bar to the sexiest street, according to the magazine’s website.

Although LSU is the sexiest college in the country, Baton Rouge fell short to Austin, Texas, in the battle for “sexiest town.”

LSU junior Branden Lawson said he believes the University’s party atmosphere contributes to its sexy status.

“I think Louisiana is known for a sexual identity,” Lawson said.

But LSU sophomore Brittany Castete said she doesn’t sense a sexual atmosphere on campus.

“I don’t see LSU as being sexy,” Castete said.

Melanie Wilson, a junior, said the title puts LSU at the forefront of the SEC.

“I’m glad we won instead of Alabama, Georgia or another school,” Wilson said.

The cowboy-themed wedding was the second wedding he has officiated.

Karimian, a graduate student working on his dissertation, is just one of 83 U. Kentucky community members who are ordained ministers.

They are ordained through the Universal Life Church Monastery, a nonprofit organization from Seattle, Wash., that gives people the ability to perform legally-recognized wedding ceremonies, according to its website.

Karimian said he wasn’t serious when he became ordained.

“I did it as a joke to make my mom laugh,” Karimian said, “so she could call me ‘reverend.’”

In just a few minutes, anyone can register online to be ordained for free.

“It’s not like it’s a big, long process,” said Eric Gresham, a social work junior, who is also ordained.

All one has to do is create an account at themonastery.org.

“It is a lot more meaningful or touching when a friend or family member performs a wedding,” said Andy Fulton, media spokesman for Universal Life Church.

Fulton, who is a senior at U. Washington, said becoming ordained is “increasing dramatically” among college students.

Since the church was founded in 2006, the number of ordained college students has doubled, he said.

“People our age are really less interested in having a conventional clergy lead (a ceremony),” Fulton said.

He said there isn’t a “desire to maintain tradition.”

Karimian, who identifies as non-denominational, has officiated two wedding ceremonies and said the bride and groom wanted to “break away from traditional ceremonies.” Both weddings were outside and not in a church.

Gresham will be presiding over his friends’ wedding in a year and a half, and said his friends didn’t want a pastor.

Gresham said since he’s known his friends for a long time, he isn’t nervous.

“Getting married by someone you’re best friends with,” he said, is better than “a pastor you don’t know very well.”

The first wedding Karimian officiated was his cousin’s, and he said he was happy to do it.

He recalled surprising everyone at the ceremony — as the bride walked down the aisle, he moved from his spot as a groomsman to the alter where he was holding a Bible. He said everyone looked shocked, especially his aunt, who is the mother of the groom. He then looked to his mother, who had “one of the biggest grins I’ve ever seen on her face,” he said.

The first thing his mom asked him after the ceremony was if it is legal.

And it is legal.

The nonprofit organization is registered as a church, and there are no laws concerning ordination for church ministers.

All but three states recognize the ministers, Fulton said.

Becoming ordained is most popular for weddings, Fulton said, however one could officiate burials or do hospice work at hospitals.

“They don’t become ordained for religious reasons,” Fulton said. “It doesn’t matter what religious affiliation a minister has.”

It is also a matter of cost, as it can cost hundreds of dollars to get a minister, he said.

“But if you have a friend ordained, they can do it for free,” Fulton said. “It is more intimate and meaningful, and less expensive.”

Karimian said he was honored to do the weddings for his family and friends, but probably won’t for others.

“I’m not going to go out and marry just anybody just because I could do it,” he said. Gresham agreed. “I don’t really have a desire to do strangers’ weddings,” Gresham said.

After purchasing sound bytes of various songbirds from a sound consultant in London and combing them with soothing music, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris had the recording play from speakers placed along the main streets of Lancaster.

Crime rates in the city have dropped significantly since the bird recordings began their song. Minor crime has fallen 15 percent and major crimes have decreased 6 percent, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The recording has been calming the people of Lancaster, Parris said, making them less inclined to act criminally.

“We’re not seeing that impulse-control crime,” Parris said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “It has just been astonishing to us how the community has changed as a result of a one-half-mile stretch.”

Eileen Bjornstrom, a U. Missouri associate professor of sociology, did not rule out the possibility of the chirping having some affect, but she said there could be other reasons for the trend in Lancaster.

“Crime has been declining in many places for a while now, including Lancaster.” Bjornstrom said. “If they were already experiencing a decline, the continued decline may have continued regardless of the chirping. This is not to say there is no value in the chirping. If people like it, then it probably does no harm and it may put those who enjoy it in a better mood, but that is an issue that is separate from whether it reduces crime or not.”

Columbia, Mo. has been following the nationwide pattern. Since 2009, there has been a drop in larceny theft throughout the city.

While Bjornstrom had never heard of any studies that connected pleasant sounds to criminal tendencies, she did know of a few that discussed the effects of unpleasant sounds.

“Persistent unpleasant neighborhood noise has been related to health because it can be stressful,” she said, referencing car horns, police sirens or gunshots. “Excessive unpleasant noise may tend to occur in the same places as crime, but it would likely be because the areas that do not have strong informal social control are less able to control both crime and excessive noise, not because noise causes crime.”

Some MU students said they thought the bird initiative could be plausible.

“It seems like their might be some soothing aspects to having bird music played in the streets, but at the same time, I don’t know if there’s much science to back it up,” freshman Aaron Kressig said.

Others were not convinced.

“I think it’s a waste of money,” freshman James Benoist said. “If you put chirping noises in downtown St. Louis it wouldn’t have any effect.”

Some students, such as sophomore Michael Derstine, thought the idea was ridiculous.

“I don’t think that it’s valid,” Derstine said. “Even if there is a small chance that there’s a correlation between the two, there’s no evidence to prove it is the cause.”

The Toronto-based filmmaker, photographer, and, most recently, funnyman, studied at Columbia U.’s School of the Arts from September 2009 to May 2010. “And then I ran out of money,” he said, laughing. “So that’s why I left. It’s hard to get funding to go to school in the U.S. from Canada.”

Sheppard said that while he would have loved to have completed his degree, he wouldn’t have had it any other way in light of his recent Internet success.

The idea behind the Twitter account occurred to him and his boyfriend Kyle Humphrey spontaneously. “We were sitting around one day watching TV or something and one of us said, ‘Can you pass me that blanket,’ and it kind of struck us as something a girl would say.”

They started tweeting in April 2011, and within a day or two, had accumulated over 200 tweets. Now, the first installment of “Shit Girls Say” has 14 million views.

While their spitfire aphorisms are far from politically correct, the sayings are colored by a reality that is stranger than fiction. “We started thinking about the complexities and layers of what might be said and what might be funny about it, and we tried to go beyond things like, ‘My butt looks fat in these jeans,’ and those kinds of clichéd jokes.”

Much of that knack for complex observational humor is rooted in his and Kyle’s relationships with the women in their lives. “We grew up around strong women, with single mothers and sisters and grandmothers and aunts, and our ears were tuned to these things,” Sheppard added. “It just dawned on us that there was something funny in that.”

His intention, though, is not to tell specific stories, but rather to document “what people say en masse.”

Not surprisingly, Sheppard admits that most of the comedians he looks up to are women, particularly those who are “unapologetic and willful and strong and funny.”

He also prefers comedy with strong female leads, and takes inspiration from sitcoms like “Strangers With Candy” and “Nighty Night.”

Out of a desire both to direct and perform—and with past drag experience to boot—he shot and cut three videos in December, featuring cameos from actress and singer Juliette Lewis. Sheppard still has a fourth video in the works.

As the YouTube uploads acquire Internet meme status, copycats in the style of the original videos crop up daily—including Spectator’s “Shit Columbians Say”—slicing and cataloguing the online and offline populations one video at a time. “It’s nothing but flattering,” Sheppard said. “We haven’t seen them all, obviously, but some of them are quite good. The way the Internet works, I think it’s really exciting to have.”

Out of those viewed, he finds “Shit Monks Say” and “Shit Nobody Says” to be particularly clever.

Beyond the world of “Shit X Says,” Sheppard designed the album art for Feist’s most recent release, “Metals,” and has directed selected music videos and short films.

But rather than detaching his side projects from his more serious work, Sheppard remains optimistic that he can integrate his visual skills and past experience as a filmmaker into comedy.

“This opens up so many doors for me,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to do comedy, and I didn’t know if I was allowed, I guess you could say.”

Despite his self-proclaimed “freedom to be funny,” Sheppard hesitated before replying when asked to say something representative of the typical Columbia student.

“I don’t go below 96th.”

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is betting on the Patriots this year as well. He and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed to a ‘friendly wager’ for their cities’ respective teams, according to a press release.

The two mayors decided that after Super Bowl XLVI, one family from the winning city will win a free trip to the losing city, where “they will be treated to some of the finest amenities and attractions the city has to offer,” according to the release.

“I have a lot of faith in the Patriots. They carried us this far, and I hope they’ll carry the Vince Lombardi Trophy right back to Boston,” Menino said in the release. “But either on the field or off, the City of Boston wins by being able to showcase some of the best our great city has to offer.”

Some of those offerings include box seats to a show at the Citi Performing Arts Center and to either a Bruins or Celtics game, tours of several historical sites, dinners at Legal Sea Foods and Top of the Hub and a photo with Menino himself.

The cities will hold a raffle after the game Sunday to determine the winners of what the two mayors are calling the ‘Super Tour.’ The losing city will provide a round-trip flight for the winning, four-person family and host the group for two nights.

The bet was designed to highlight tourism in each city and in Boston, “all of the accommodations are being donated,” according to an email from Menino’s office to The Daily Free Press.

Many spots in Boston willing to host the New York family, should the Patriots lose, said Menino approached them with the prospect.

“Mayor Menino asked the general manager of the restaurant and he was thrilled,” said Top of the Hub spokeswoman Rosanne Mercer. “We are all Pats fans. It was our pleasure to be supportive.”

She said tourists would be nothing new for the restaurant, which, located at the top of the Prudential Center, overlooks the entire city.

“We appeal to both visitors and residents alike,” she said, adding that despite this, the restaurant “host[s] probably far more Boston residents.”

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which has agreed to provide a “behind-the-scenes tour” for the winning family, also serves “a good mix” of both tourists and locals, said ISGM Media Relations Manager Michael Busack.

Menino asked about the bet when the museum opened its new wing earlier this month, Busack said, adding, “it’s something we’d love to participate in.”

Should the Patriots win, a family from Boston could go on a VIP tour of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new American wing, attend the Phantom of the Opera’s 10,000th performance, watch a Knicks or Rangers game and have dinner at The Russian Tea Room.

Bloomberg said even if the Giants lose, New York would be happy to host a group of Patriots fans. But he said he remained confident in his city’s team.

“I know the Giants are going to win next Sunday and bring home the trophy they’ve been working toward ever since the last time they beat the Patriots,” Bloomberg said in the press release, referring to the last time the Giants and the Patriots faced off in a Super Bowl, in 2008.

Last time, the Giants beat the Patriots 17-14, despite predictions to the contrary.

That year, Menino and Bloomberg bet with pounds of food, including 100 cups of New England Clam Chowder from Legal Sea Foods, 12 dozen Boston cream pies and 42 pounds of rugelach, according to a 2008 press release.

Despite the Super Tour’s potential promotion of Boston’s tourism industry and the friendliness of the wager, Patriots fans are still rooting for their team.

Although Top of the Hub would welcome the New Yorkers, Mercer said she trusts in New England and that a Super Tour of Boston is “not gonna happen.”

Travel + Leisure magazine released the results of its annual online survey last week, and New York City won the title of rudest city in America.

Each year, the magazine allows online readers to rank large cities throughout America in categories including Cleanliness, Safety, Ethnic Dining and Architecture. In the most recent America’s Favorite Cities survey, New York City received the lowest score by non-residents in the Friendly category.

Whether or not New Yorkers truly have a bad attitude or it just appears that way to outsiders has yet to be determined. NYU sociology professor Dalton Conley said it may be the diversity and pace of the city that gives people this impression.

“First, New York City is fast-paced, so we don’t reserve a lot of time for nicities,” Conley said.

“Also, it’s huge and anonymous, which means it’s not only not expected that you’d tip your hat and say hi to someone passing you on the street,” he added. “It would in fact be downright weird. Third, we are a city with a high percentage of foreign born [residents].”

Different cultures and languages represented in the city by tourists and residents from other countries lead to quick and basic communication that often appears rude, according to Dalton.

Los Angeles, Boston, Miami and Washington D.C., accompanied New York City as rude cities whereas New Orleans, San Juan, P.R., and Nashville, Tenn., topped the Friendly category.

NYU freshman Carlos Perez, a San Juan native, compared the New York lifestyle with the one back home.

“People are infinitely nicer back home,” Perez said. “Even just riding in an elevator, people usually say ‘good morning.’ I hardly ever see that happen here in the city.”

“In San Juan, people are generally just a lot warmer,” he added. “They take time out of their day to brighten yours.”

New York residents have a different perspective of New York City’s friendliness.

“From a service perspective, I don’t think it’s a very rude place,” resident Samantha Bullock, 31, said. “But from a ‘people-on-the-subway’ perspective — absolutely. There’s no chivalry there, either.”

But resident Doris Gerdes, 21, does not think New York City is rude.

“I think it’s harder for some people to survive here,” she said.

Not only was New York City rated the least friendly, but it was also voted last place in the Affordability, Cleanliness and Peace and Quiet categories.

Despite low scoring in the four other categories, Travel + Leisure reported that New York City ranked number 1 in the Theater/performance art, Diverse, Stylish, Classical music and Luxury stores categories.

Scientists have found a bacterium called TU-103 in the waste of African zebras, which might be the solution to a cheaper enzyme for biofuel, according to The New York Times.

Tim Sink, an intern at U. Florida’s Bioenergy and Sustainable Technologies Laboratory, said the available enzymes are expensive to use, so finding another microbe is essential to the economic efficiency of a biofuel project.

He said it’s hard to guess whether the new enzyme will be successful because research is conducted on a trial-and-error basis.

Pratap Pullammanappallil, who teaches environmental biotechnology at UF, said animal droppings are commonly used to create another alternative energy source called biogas, a replacement for natural gas.

Jonathan Miot, director of the Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo, said zebras, which are in the same taxonomic family as horses, have especially strong stomachs.

Miot referred to them as a garbage dump, because while most animals have trouble digesting various species of grasses, zebras can eat all of them.

Miot said zebras have excellent digestive systems due to the bacteria in their guts.

When a zebra eats, the bacteria break down cellulose, a substance indigestible to mammals.

The bacteria produce a waste called volatile fatty acid, which the zebra uses as energy.

Zebras’ bacteria just happen to be right for biofuel research.

“They eat, and they poop,” Miot said. “It’s what they do all day anyways.”

But zebras can be dangerous to handle. They have a strong kick, which, he said, is equivalent to the power of a hand grenade explosion.

Scientists won’t need to continue to gather droppings from captive zebras because the enzymes can be reproduced in a laboratory, Pullammanappallil said.

Miot said Tulane’s project has the potential to inpsire new ideas about how to harness animals’ capabilities.

“There is a lot of stuff out there that we have no idea [about],” he said. “Animals are a lot more creative than we think, though it’s not intentional.”

Whether you’re a girl looking for a potential boyfriend, a guy looking for a bro, a guy looking for a boyfriend or a girl looking for a drinking buddy, you can tell a lot about a dude by his beer of choice. These horoscopes — or “hoposcopes” (hops, beer; get it?!) — are completely nonscientific and based exclusively on the brand’s TV commercials and my own experiences, but I am 78 percent confident in their accuracy. I suggest bringing a copy of this column to every party you attend, for reference.

Bud Light

First of all, this is the most popular beer in America, so this guy doesn’t have much of an imagination. But he won’t need one, because his girlfriend (if he can bear to have one) will be dumb as a stump — that, or an overbearing witch. He loves to use made-up words that have no meaning like “drinkability” and “seductivity.”

Approach tactic: This guy wants everything casual, so move in with a high-five and no shirt, regardless of gender.

Heineken

This is one smooth operator. He knows every interesting person at the party and has been to more countries than you can name. He loves to dance and will likely take over as DJ at some point, playing ridiculously awesome songs that everyone will love, but no one has ever heard of before. You will end the evening madly in love with him but also kind of hate the bastard.

Approach tactic: Let him make the first move. Give him meaningful glances from a corner, and let out a knowing chuckle when he puts on the first track of his epic playlist, as if you actually recognize the song. Your apparent coolness will be enough to lure him in.

Coors Light

If you don’t love — and I mean LOVE — football, don’t even try to get to know him. This guy lives and breathes football, specifically the NFL. If he’s not watching it, he’s talking about in incessantly. In fact, he’s probably wearing an NFL jersey right now, isn’t he? You’ve been warned.

Approach tactic: If you’re a girl, move in while wearing a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader uniform. It’s the only way you’ll get his attention. Guys, any reference to Aaron Rodgers will be enough to spark a conversation.

Sam Adams

This guy loves him some Boston. He likely has a full, luxurious beard and enjoys chopping down trees and discussing hops. Bring up the Red Sox, the Patriots (football) or patriots (founding fathers), and he’ll talk your ear off all night. He will also snort derisively at any drink involving fruit.

Approach tactic: Exclaim adoringly over his choice of Sam Adams. Mention that you’ve been meaning to get into home-brewing, and ask if he has any tips about which yeast to use.

Keystone Light

He’s wearing flannel, isn’t he? And Wranglers? And work boots? Yeah, I thought so. Despite his Dukes of Hazzard look and patchy mustache (yes, it’s possible to have a patchy mustache) this guy is smooth. I mean, really smooth. The ladies he cavorts with always look a little like Dolly Parton (in certain, ahem, aspects), and they seem to think he’s the greatest. Besides parties, he’s often spotted at convenience stores and gas stations.

Approach tactic: This guy wants to be the hero, so present him with a small problem that he can quickly solve with muscles and cunning.

Corona

Relax, bro, this guy is cool as a cucumber. He’s probably just back from snowboarding in the Rockies or surfing down in Mexico and needs to unwind with the most casual of party beers. He’s likely sitting very peacefully in a lawn chair or oversized La-Z-Boy, hair flopping around in front of his eyes and vacant expression on his face.

Approach tactic: Offer a fist bump and crash on the chair next to him for a while. Don’t speak at first; you don’t want to startle him. After about five minutes you may begin a conversation about any extreme sport or Mexican beach you wish, just expect the conversation to be a little slow.

PBR

This guy is tricky. He could either be a hipster who thinks he’s amazing and awesome, or he’s a minor who had to take whichever beer his alcohol hookup picked out. An easy way to distinguish between the two is to offer him a shot: If he’s the former he will glare at you in disgust and say he’s “good.” If he’s the latter, he will jump on any drink with an alcohol percentage higher than five.

Approach tactic for hipster: Compliment his suspenders and launch into a conversation about the Occupy movement. Try to bring up the most obscure band you know. When in doubt, use this simple formula: (Name) + “and the” + (any combination of two words) = great band name.

Approach tactic for minor: Just bring alcohol. Any alcohol.

Smirnoff Ice

This boy is a freshman. This boy has never had a beer before.

Approach tactic: Offer to walk him back to the dorms in exchange for a Cheesy Griller.

Much like a butterfly’s flap can cause a hurricane across the world, the seemingly innocent act of naming this child has sealed her fate as an obscure token of our generation. No one will ever know of this child, no one will care and no one will even realize who she is until her appearance on “Celebrity Rehab” in 2036.

While the “weird name for our offspring” thing isn’t unique to celebrities, they are best known for choosing the most outlandish names possible. It’s like they’re all playing a game with each other. Maybe that’s it: they’re just messing with us. I bet there’s even a point system for it.

What makes Blue Ivy such a great name is the fact that it involves an adjective. Chances are, she’ll simply go by Blue. However, her name literally makes a statement, that “ivy is blue.” That is simply hilarious. It gets better when you consider the notions of homonyms. If my name were Blue, I would be Blue Harrison, as in “oh yeah I just blew Harrison.” This poor girl, instead, will have to deal with the jokes that will come with a ridiculous name like Blue Ivy.

“Have either of your parents ever even seen what Ivy looks like?”

“Are you sad, or just a little Blue?”

While I am not the wittiest of the school children, I’m sure the children that will attend whatever ridiculous Montessori school these two send Blue to will be more than creative enough to come up with ideas.

Perhaps the fictional Tobias Fünke had something to do with the naming of this child. Or maybe they’re hoping she can be in the next Smurfs movie. In 20 years she can take the reigns from Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, and for that matter, Bret Michaels, as lead singer of Poison.

Granted, the last time I wrote about children and relatives of celebrities, I included a reference to Elizabeth Olson, the third Olson sister. Her movie, “Martha Marcy May Marlene” was then released to rave reviews. Elizabeth was singled out for her solid and moving performance in the movie. In some reviews, she was called more talented than either of her sisters and without the adorable quirkiness that being identical twins allows.

Is this The Daily Nebraskan’s version of the Colbert Bump? Is my reference or declaration of an eminent failure, in fact, a prophecy of success? Perhaps if I denounce The Specials, they’ll do a North American tour that includes more than just Toronto and L.A. Maybe I can convince At The Drive-In to play more than just dumb festivals and actually be a real band again if I say their reuniting is moot and unnecessary.

Or maybe I can convince comic book fans to stop hating on the new “Ultimate Spider-Man” if I say Peter Parker was the worst thing to happen to comic character development. Never mind, I would never joke about that.

That’s not even remotely funny.

But anyway, celebrities do have a certain ability to get away with ridiculous behavior. They make obscene amounts of cash money and for not much effort (let’s be honest, it’s not like Beyonce is producing her own work in her basement studio). They are allowed to get ridiculous tattoos, carry a vial of blood from their lovers around their neck or go to rehab multiple times. It’s not because they’re special and they certainly don’t earn this advantage.

We let them act ridiculously because it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Most teen parents out there are now probably saying to themselves, “Man, it sucks that we got pregnant, but at least we didn’t name our kid Blue Ivy.”

The proposed bill aims to set “performance standards” to performances of the National Anthem in Indiana’s public schools and universities.

Any performer who does not comply could face a $25 fine.

“Parodies, while some are intended as harmless jokes, have the potential to end up being very disrespectful,” Becker said in a prepared statement. “Singing our national anthem is often a sign of gratitude to those who have served our country, a tradition I think should be preserved.”

According to the bill, which would also cover private schools receiving state or local scholarship funds, performers of the National Anthem would be required to sign a contract agreeing to perform the original composition of the song without drastic alterations.

This applies not only to the lyrics, but the tune as well.

However, what would or would not meet these performance standards has yet
to be identified.

This task, the bill says, would be determined by the State Department of Education and the Commission for Higher Education.

But Eugene O’Brien, executive associate dean at the Jacobs School of Music, said he is unaware of an “official” version of the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

“There are lots of different versions out there, and the way the music was written and performed in the 19th century — before it was the National Anthem — is quite different from the way we hear it these days,” O’Brien said.

The lyrics of the “Star-Spangled Banner” are a poem written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, an American lawyer and amateur poet. The tune, however, is less original. The lyrics of the “Star-Spangled Banner” were set to British drinking song “The Anacreontic Song.”

Indiana is not the first state to mandate guidelines for the “Star-Spangled Banner.” In fact, even federal law has established guidelines.

According to federal law, those in uniform “should give the military salute at the first note of the anthem and maintain that position until the last note.”

Everybody else who is present for the performance of the anthem “should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart, and men not in uniform, if applicable, should remove their headdress.”

O’Brien mentioned a law in Massachusetts prohibiting “rearranging the National Anthem in whole or in part.”

O’Brien said composer Igor Stranvinsky, whom O’Brien considers one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, was arrested in Boston for his arrangement of the National Anthem in the 1940s.

“Where do you draw the line?” O’Brien said. “And who makes that decision?”

O’Brien said students at the Jacobs School of Music perform the National Anthem without changes to its original rendition when asked to perform at an event.

But in January 2011, a Bloomington High School North student took the plunge at a basketball game. Shai Warfield-Cross’s version contained the original lyrics but a slightly different tune.

After observers complained to the school, Warfield-Cross was told she could not sing the song that way again because it was disrespectful to the people who died for the United States.

IU Law Professor Daniel Conkle said Becker’s bill could be unconstitutional.
Although Conkle prefers traditional renditions of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” he identified several legal pitfalls within the bill.

“I think it is misguided,” Conkle said. “I think the way the law goes about attempting to deal with this is unduly intrusive and is plagued with all kinds of vagueness issues if and when they do try to come up with the standards that they might have in mind.”

Conkle said the legislature could insist that schools and universities use selection criteria that are consistent with maintaining the traditional rendition of the National Anthem.

“In terms of standards, or the ideas of standards,” Conkle said, “I don’t think that is necessarily unconstitutional in this particular setting of school-sponsored event.”

But for Conkle, the bill becomes problematic regarding the idea of imposing fines.

“The idea of imposing fines on people who don’t comply with the standards looks to me like a type of punishment for First Amendment activity that would be problematic,” Conkle said. “It is not entirely clear to me, but I think the fine idea of this makes it, let’s just say, constitutionally problematic, if not obviously unconstitutional.”

Aside from potential First Amendment issues, he said the bill also contains numerous implementation problems.

Although the bill would require schools to keep audio recordings of all performances of the National Anthem for two years and develop procedures to deal with complaints if a musician is accused of straying from the performance standards, Conkle said it would still be difficult to enforce.

“How in the world would you know whether someone had violated that standard? So you’ve got incredible sorts of issues of vagueness,” Conkle said. “I think this proposed law is a very bad idea.”

The talk focused on the colorful subculture of science-themed body art and how researchers in every field, from archaeology to biochemistry, use tattoos to capture what they love about their discipline.

“In a weird, unexpected way, tattoos are a good way of illustrating the deep passion that scientists have for their subject,” said Zimmer.

The talk used slides to showcase an eclectic mix of tattoos, ranging from the highly technical to the fantastical.

Zimmer began by showing off a seemingly simple tattoo of a DNA helix belonging to Harvard Medical School neurobiologist Sandeep “Robert” Datta before revealing that its nucleotide structure spelled out Datta’s wife’s initials.

“Some people think of tattoos as a thing that you get when you’re young, drunk, or both,” Zimmer said. “But these scientists have put a lot of knowledge and personal connections into theirs.”

Next on display was a woman covered from shoulder to shoulder in gigantic insects: moths, beetles, and ants, in tribute to her field of entomology.

Chemistry tattoos were also represented, most notably by a woman with the structure of serotonin—the “pleasure” molecule believed to cause happiness—on her lower thigh.

“It’s weird at first when your in-box starts getting filled with pictures of partially disrobed scientists,” said Zimmer, earning laughter from the audience of about 200.

The talk also delved into the history behind modern science tattoos. Zimmer explained how Sir Joseph Banks, an English botanist, learned of tattoos from the people of New Zealand and Tahiti during a voyage in the late 18th century. Zimmer drew parallels between Maori tribesmen with full-face tattoos and scientists who fill their entire back with complex algebraic equations, as well as discussing the powers that tattoos were thought to hold in the past.

“Sailors believed that if they had a tattoo of an anchor on their arm, it would save them from drowning,” said Zimmer.

Even Ötzi the Iceman, the famous 5,400-year-old mummy found preserved in the Austrian Alps, was found to have some crude tattoos on his body.

By way of more modern implications, Zimmer talked about how people use tattoos as a means of expressing their belief in science in the face of oppression. For example, Busra D. Ozpolat, a modern-day Turkish biologist, bears a tattoo of Charles Darwin’s famous finches, whose differentiated beaks helped inspire him to develop his theory of evolution. This holds “a lot of profound meaning,” said Zimmer, as Turkey’s creationist leanings have made it difficult for scientists to teach evolution there. According to the Washington Post, fewer than 25 percent of Turks believe in evolution, the lowest percentage in any developed nation.

Aimee Gillespie, a graduate student at MIT studying geochemistry, said she “never knew how many of my fellow scientists [had] tattoos,” adding that if she were to get a tattoo, it would be of the Keeling Curve—a measure of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.

Twenty-eight years later, college men are doing the same.

In fall 2010, “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” premiered on The Hub, a TV station with programming mainly for children ages 6 to 12.

Little did Hasbro know that older men would be swept up by this animated sensation.

“I watched the first episode and, as soon as Fluttershy was introduced, was hooked,” said Daniel Talton, an Indiana U. sophomore and a self-proclaimed “brony.”

“Bronies” — a portmanteau of “bro” and “ponies” — have built a vibrant and involved community in which they share fan art, fanfiction and, above all, their love for “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” and its characters.

Talton says the term “brony” stems from the adult fan base, both male and female, that creates a large base of fan content and interaction with the show.

“There is an absurd amount of fan music, videos, screenplays and fiction. … I’m currently reading one that is at least 300 pages long so far,” Talton said.

Reviews of the show often cite the top-notch animation and production work that goes into the cartoon as a reason the show attracts the unexpected demographic. However, Talton reveals that the adoration is even simpler than that.

“I like the show because it’s funny and the characters are believable and relatable,” he said.

While the term was originally coined because of the male following, older girls have an appreciation for the show, too.

IU sophomore Adriana Giuliani was introduced to the show by another of her “brony” friends. Others often find the show online through YouTube or Memebase, a collection of internet jokes and trends.

“I like ‘MLP’ because it, in some sense, brings back the security and color of childhood but is still stimulating,” Giuliani said. “The stories are appealing and the characters have a lot of depth.”

Indeed, part of the show’s appeal is original Creative Director Lauren Faust’s goal to step away from the overtly girly aspect of the show and instead create a story with rounded characters, a developed setting and adventure-filled story lines.

According to an article Faust wrote for Ms. Magazine, the show wasn’t made “just for girls.”

“My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” was to be a show about girls going on educational, complex journeys that could be just as interesting as any “boyish” cartoon.

Talton said people’s reactions to his appreciation for the show are certainly varied. He said one friend thought his interest in the show was “pedophilic.”

Alex Arnett, a freshman at IU-Kokomo, said many people are “weirded out” by his “brony” status.

“I have had very few people actually ‘accept’ it,” he said.

Arnett said he loves to watch the show, but he distances himself from forums such as “Equestria Daily.”

”It seems a little bit too far in my opinion,” he said.

Giuliani said she does not view herself as a “brony” for similar reasons.

“It isn’t an issue about whether I am a girl or not,” she said. “A lot of association with the word ‘brony’ is with the social websites that are around about the show… I am not involved with any of that.”

Regardless, these fans aren’t afraid to express their love for the show.

“It’s a TV show that gives me a few minutes of childlike pleasure for a few minutes every other day,” he said. “The ‘brony’ community is just a collection of fans of ‘My Little Pony.’ No more, no less.”

Joe Garden and Carol Kolb gave audience members an inside view of the fake news source to a background of laughter during the evening’s programming.

The lecture started by comparing The Onion to other news outlets, including CNN, The New York Times and The Badger Herald.

Compared to these sources, Garden said The Onion was on top with 100 “trillion” readers, putting CNN in second place with its five trillion. For journalistic integrity, The Onion scored a perfect six out of six, while The New York Times scored at a five and The Badger Herald at a zero, “because they have no journalistic integrity whatsoever,” Garden said.

“We’re all friends, and I feel bad showing you people these charts,” Kolb said amid laughter from the audience.

Garden and Kolb also featured some of The Onion’s popular articles and video clips. Headlines drawing some of the most attention from the audience included:

-“I’ll Be Able to Get This Big Pot of Chili Over to My Friends House if I Put on These Roller Skates”

-“Guy in Philosophy Class Needs to Shut the Fuck Up”

-“Governor Walker Should Be Flogged for his Inability to Control his Underlings”

-“Child Bankrupts Make-A-Wish Foundation With Wish for Unlimited Wishes”

Following their presentation, Garden and Kolb opened the floor up for questions, and the lecture took on a more serious nature.

Both Garden and Kolb said the thought process of each of the paper’s writers involves what goes on within each individual’s head and can vary with each writer.

“It’s whatever I happen to be obsessed about at any given time, usually dolphins or technology,” Garden said. Garden later added, “Sometimes life just gives you Herman Cain.”

When asked if The Onion had ever been sued, Kolb emphasized constitutional rights.

She also added that publicity from suing The Onion would not be worth much anymore as their news has an established reputation for not being credible.

“There’s a little thing called the First Amendment, and it has served us very well,” Kolb said.

Still, Garden and Kolb agreed that research remains an integral part to their writing process.

Kolb used an example of spelling Obama’s name wrong and how a writer would not want to do it, while Garden emphasized that this type of inaccuracy takes away from the humor of the paper.

The two ended their time by explaining how to use satire as a tool to examine subjects or issues in an effective way to bring important issues to the public in relation. This, they said, is how The Onion has impacted society.

UW freshman Andrew Schultz said he found the lecture to be both a fun and entertaining experience.

“The lecture was interesting in how you could tell from the way they talked that their workplace was the same as their writing: fun and laid back,” Schultz said.

Penn State now owns a handful of .xxx domain names — but not for adult entertainment purposes.

With .xxx domains about to go on the market to the public, the university has been purchasing sites to prevent unaffiliated porn sites from making use of the school’s name.

Earlier this year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers voted to create the .xxx domain in an effort to better flag sites with adult content, but with this decision came concern from universities and many other trademark owners.

“These domains are obviously going to be used with adult entertainment. Schools as well as other trademark owners have done so much to protect and promote their brand,” Michael Drucker, vice president and associate counsel for The Collegiate Licensing Company, said. “They don’t want that brand to be associated with the adult entertainment business.”

ICANN took this concern into consideration, and before making the domain names available to the public, the company offered trademark owners the opportunity to purchase sites containing their trademarked names.

“They provided a period of time, the Sunshine B period, which allowed owners of registered trademarks that chance to purchase domain names that included their trademarks before opening the .xxx sale to the public,” Jeffrey Hermann, director of university relations and member of the University Licensing Committee, said.

This sunshine period opened in September, at which time Penn State purchased four .xxx domains: Penn State, PSU, Nittany Lions and The Pennsylvania State University.

“These are the most popular of our federally registered trademarks. The committee [the University Licensing Committee] felt this was a good opportunity to protect the Penn State brand from possible negative associations,” Hermann said.

Each domain name cost the university $200, but Hermann said the price tag also to prevents associations that reflect poorly on the university. That purchase will also prevent anyone from buying a domain that includes the trademarked term with other words, such as nittanyliongirls.xxx.

“We also still have the standard dispute resolution process we can follow to remove any domain name which violates these or any of our other trademarks,” Hermann said.

The sunshine period only applied to trademarks that were already federally registered, in other words, not just any name could be purchased, Drucker said.

“Penn State has an excellent federal registration portfolio, so they are able to protect themselves,” Drucker said.

The .xxx domain names will become available to the public starting Dec. 6.

More than 1,500 people stood on the muddy hills and sidewalks surrounding Mirror Lake and observed about 100 students jump and splash in the chilly water before midnight. After midnight, more than 2,500 spectators watched the chaos and about 300 participants were in the water at a time in Mirror Lake.

Bethany Stephens, a first-year in marketing, jumped for the first time Tuesday.

“It was awesome,” Stephens said. “I jumped in five times.”

After midnight, air temperatures dropped from 57 degrees to 50 degrees. With winds between 19 mph and 30 mph, the conditions felt more like 43 degrees, according to weather.com.

Students screamed and cheered “O-H-I-O,” “Beat Michigan,” and many expletives expressing the feelings toward the state up north. Many students chimed in together and sang “We Don’t Give a Damn for the Whole State of Michigan” or started to do the “Buckeye Bounce,” a jumping cheer done in Ohio Stadium to the song “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes.

The Mirror Lake jump has been an annual tradition since 1990 and occurs the week of the OSU-Michigan football game. In years past, the jump was held on the Thursday before the Michigan game. Last year and this year, however, as the football game is the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, and students jumped on Tuesday instead of Thursday.

The jump into Mirror Lake is not sponsored and strongly discouraged by the university every year. Despite a warning email from Vice President for Student Life Javaune Adams-Gaston about the dangers of jumping into Mirror Lake, students still showed Buckeye pride by jumping into the cold water just southwest of the Oval.

On the east side of the Lake, h2o Christian Church on campus handed out free hot chocolate to those who jumped. Josh Bodner, a third year in electrical engineering, worked at the h2o Church table.

“We are handing out free hot chocolate,” Bodner said. “Just spreading the love.”

OSU Police were along the perimeter of Mirror Lake monitoring the crowd. Officer Chad Stanton said four people were arrested for disorderly conduct. University police also received one report of a broken ankle. Officer Stanton said he expected more arrests by the end of the night.

Ryan Horstman, a fourth-year in agribusiness, jumped into Mirror Lake all four years during his time at OSU. Horstman also said this year was better than last year.

“It never gets better. It is so awesome, I love doing it,” Horstman said. “Last year I ran back trying (not) to freeze my butt off. This year was awesome. I love Ohio State.”

Derric Dobbins, a third-year in business marketing, jumped his second time and noticed a difference between this year’s and last year’s jump.

“It was a little bit warmer, which made a lot more people come out,” Dobbins said. “Definitely more crowded and muddier cause it rained but it was a blast. It was fun and everyone came out and splashing each other, it was great.”

Nick Stallard, a fourth-year in political science, did not jump into Mirror Lake for health concerns, but watched for his second year in a row.

“I do appreciate and respect the tradition, but I’ve had mono, I’ve had staff infections, and I really just can’t risk getting sick anymore,” Stallard said. “After a year of adversity and a year of problems and the ‘Tattoo-gate’ situation, I think it is incredible to see the student body come out here and support the team and supporting the school.”

Lauren Cates, a second-year in pre-nursing, also did not jump this year trying to build up the courage to jump her senior year.

“I think it’s great that we have this much spirit and we keep it up year after year and everybody comes out,” Cates said. “Everyone has a good time, even if you just stand out and watch.”

University police ended the Mirror Lake jump at 1:15 a.m. Wednesday.

OSU travels to Ann Arbor to play Michigan at noon on Saturday.

The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles has rejected specialized license plate requests expressing hatred toward Michigan.

The BMV has a special plates reviewing committee that meets every morning to review the combination requests for personalized license plates submitted the day before, said Lindsey Bohrer the BMV spokeswoman. Approved plates go on to be printed, and when a plate is rejected a notice is sent to the requester.

“What they do is they look at a variety of sources, there’s a variety of ages to the people on the committee, a variety of positions just so we can get all angles of the staffing and BMV,” Bohrer said. “So what we do is, those people look at the different combinations, they go onto different sites, they go onto urban slang, urban dictionary they go onto different language sites, just so that we can make sure that none are inappropriate.”

There is an appeals process if someone feels they should be able to have the license plate, Bohrer said. The appeal can be sent to the registrar who will review the plate and have a final say on whether the plate will be approved.

The BMV has an agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union as to what plates can be approved.

“We like to stay on a good balance between freedom of speech, but also limiting things that are profanity and things like that,” Bohrer said.

Bohrer said the agreement has three major parts: They would reject requests containing words, combinations or phrases that are so profane such as swear words or sexually explicit plates; combinations that are so offensive they could reasonably be expected to provoke a violent response are prohibited; and word combinations and phrases that advocate immediate lawlessness are prohibited.

The ACLU of Ohio first got involved at least 10 years ago after being tipped off by a story from The Columbus Dispatch, said Gary Daniels the associate director for the ACLU of Ohio. The agreement the BMV has with the ACLU of Ohio came out after the ACLU of Ohio sued the BMV after finding a client whose plates had been ultimately rejected.

When the BMV agreed to let its client have his plates and through settlement discussions came up with the guidelines, Daniels said.

“Under the settlement, they still have the power to reject or authorize certain plates, but I think it’s clear that they are still going overboard with regard to what it is that they are censoring,” Daniels said.

The issue goes to the basics of first amendment and free speech law and when the government opens a forum for free speech in public settings like a town hall or public square, Daniels said.

“You can’t have the government in the business of picking winners and losers when it comes to exercise of free speech, it’s very much the same way it is here with the license plates. The government has opened up a forum for speech, and I don’t doubt that there are some things that they can censor and that courts wouldn’t care about that, they would see that as constitutional,” Daniels said.

While the ACLU of Ohio has not done any follow-up investigations yet, they would be interested in hearing from anyone whose license plates have been rejected and they would investigate further from that point, Daniels said.

Some plates that have been rejected included “HATEMI,” “KILBLU” and “UMH8ER,” The Columbus Dispatch reported.

“We want people to be able to express themselves through the personalized plates, but also, we don’t want profanity or anything obscene to be out there as well, so we just try to be fair and balanced with our plates,” Bohrer said.

“The ACLU’s opinion is you open up that forum, pretty much anything goes. I mean we understand if somehow the text on a license plate could be considered obscenity, a court’s not going to allow that,” Daniels said. “Profanity is not obscenity, profanity is still protected speech under the first amendment and here we have the government … the BMV, and they’re censoring speech.

“With vanity plates, many times the government sees it as ‘Well, people might interpret it as being speech of the state because it’s a license plate.’ But, I think pretty much everybody out there understands that if you see text or numbers on a license plate that isn’t kind of standard like a lot of us have, just a combination of letters and numbers, but instead, it spells something or signifies something. … That that is because the driver of the car, or the owner of the license plates, arranged to have it that way,” Daniels said.

The BMV bans things like profanity, but these seem a little excessive when expressing pride in your school, said Andrew North, a fourth-year in electric engineering.

North said it takes censorship too far. He said it’s meant to stop things like profanity and threats, not trash talk.

“It’s a good thing if it’s like directly targeting somebody specific or if it’s deemed hurtful to somebody,” said Brooke Seidenschmidt, a second-year in exploration.

Seidenschmidt said that if it’s not harmful it shouldn’t be censored,

“It’s kind of a violation of the first amendment,” said Morgan Rivera, a second-year in public affairs. “If people want to express their hatred toward Michigan they should be able to.”

About 850 students and faculty members gathered in the Tom W. Davis Special Events Gym at Ohio State U. Wednesday to participate in an aerobics class with one of the nation’s biggest names in fitness.

There were large light fixtures on either side of the bleachers in the back of the gym, each with four large spot lights pointed at the stage. There was a railing in front of the stage, and the backdrop was a large black curtain that extended from end to end.

Sporting a completely fringed shirt with teal, orange, pink and purple stripes, Simmons loosely resembled a more colorful version of the flappers of the 1920s. His shirt, though it was not exceptionally long, extended lower than his extremely short dolphin shorts.

He also wore flesh colored tights with white shoes and socks.

The workout portion of the event lasted about 45 minutes, and was followed by an invitation for everyone to sit on the floor and listen as Simmons shared his life story.

He spoke about the weight problems he had as a child. He talked about how difficult it was to go to school, being constantly teased about his weight.

Simmons became emotional, crying as he shared his experiences.

He spoke of his struggles with bulimia and anorexia, and when he lost 119 pounds in only 2 1/2 months, he was hospitalized and near death. This lead to his decision to change his life and become the fitness icon he is today. Soon after leaving the hospital, he opened up his own fitness studio, “Slimmons” in Beverly Hills.

Simmons urged everybody to refrain from judging others based on their appearance and to follow the “golden rule” of being kind to one another.

“A lot of people judge people by the pound,” Simmons said. “But there’s no scale in heaven.”

Though the workout portion of the event was called “Sweatin’ to the Oldies,” every song played was a current hit.

During “Without You” by David Guetta, Simmons called two guys up onstage. He then grabbed their shirts, pulled them off over their heads and threw them into the crowd before busting out more aerobic-dance moves for everybody to follow along.

Simmons continued to call participants up on stage throughout the workout. It became standard for any male that came up to take off his shirt. Simmons also kissed a woman on the cheek and danced with another while rotating his pelvis. He also rubbed his hand down one man’s bare chest and then rubbed the hand on his own face.

“He was pretty touchy,” said Brandon Hoffman, a first-year in marketing and public affairs. “I didn’t expect that. I think it’s funny.”

Immediately after running out from behind the curtain at the beginning of the event, Simmons invited about 30 people to come onstage to workout beside him.

He then instructed everybody there to hug the person to their left, the person to their right, and the person behind them before the workout began.

Before starting, Simmons told the crowd what the workout would consist of. It was to include stretching, a warm-up, a cardiovascular routine, upper-body toning and a cool down.

There were huge screens at either end of the stage. A camera followed Simmons as he danced around during the workout, and the video was projected on the screens so that it was easier to for the crowd to follow along.

By the end of the workout there was close to 100 people on the stage.

Victoria Holthaus, a third-year in nutrition, was one of people whom Simmons called onto the stage.

“It was the greatest,” Holthaus said. “My mom used to workout with him on workout videos. So the fact that I was able to workout with him in person was really cool.”

The speed of the workout slowed down during “Party Rock Anthem,” by LMFAO. Rather than dancing wildly, Simmons led everybody through a slower-paced strength workout routine that targeted the upper body.

“It Will Rain” by Bruno Mars played during the cool down. The movements during this song were slow-paced stretches and swaying.

Those in attendance looked as though they had travelled through a time warp to the ‘80s, with most students dressed in brightly colored tights, spandex shirts, headbands and wristbands.

Aaron Blubaugh, a first-year graduate student in occupational therapy, was pleased with the crowd’s attire.

“I think the coolest thing was how many students dressed retro,” Blubaugh said. “It was really nice that they all got into it.”

Simmons ended the event with a prayer.

“I saw that they were hatching the day before,” Parker said. “I didn’t notice anything unusual then.”

Before they fully hatched, he had taken the incubation container holding the eggs into his living room. The next day when he stirred up the moss, he saw that the snake had two heads.

“I was pretty shocked, and my wife was excited and squealed when she saw it,” Parker said.

He said that this snake is the prettiest two-headed snake he has seen to exist.

Parker has seen a few two-headed snakes before, but hasn’t hatched any himself – until now.

“The two-headed mutation in reptiles occurs with some frequency, but is extremely rare. It is mostly seen in snakes and turtles,” said Fred Antonio, a professional acquaintance of Parker and the director of the Orianne Center for Indigo Conservation. “Daniel’s specimen is extremely unusual in that the bifurcation is more posterior, with two significant lengths of necks.”

Parker said most would think a snake with two heads has little to no chance of survival, but it all depends on how well it functions internally.

“It’s hard to tell what’s going on, so we don’t know for sure,” Parker said. “It looks healthy, really well formed with no lumps, so the chances are pretty good.”

Two-headed snakes have lived for more than 20 years in captivity and have less of a chance of surviving if released into the wild. With two brains in competition over what one body will do, feeding and moving can be an issue.

“If one brain wants to go in one direction and the other brain wants to go in the opposite direction, often the body will struggle with any meaningful movement at all,” Antonio said.

Nick Mesa, a reptile breeder and wildlife photographer involved with the reptile industry for the past 14 years, finds Parker to be extremely lucky to have produced this snake.

“It is probably the most striking two-headed snake ever produced and should be very impressive once it reaches adult size,” Mesa said.

Mesa and Parker have known each other for more than eight years and met through Florida reptile shows and online forums.

Two-headed snakes have a condition that is caused by the same process that produces conjoined twins in humans. It occurs when identical twins fail to fully separate during development.

“Having produced hundreds of snakes myself, only once have I produced twins,” Mesa said.

The mother of Parker’s two-headed snake had produced a two-headed snake before, but died before it could hatch.

“This [snake] was a truly remarkable happening,” Parker said.

Parker is in his second stint with UCF. In 2008, he worked for Dr. Dan Smith on a field project doing snake research on Southwest Florida Water Management District lands. In his current research project, he was hired as a biologist working in the Ocala National Forest to study the impacts of roads on wildlife. This entails documenting road kill, catching animals and marking them to track them, putting up motion-sensing cameras and hair snares.

Even as a kid, Parker was interested in animals. He kept pets growing up, including the turtles his dad would bring home, and has bred snakes since 8th grade.

Parker’s experience with animals led him to start his own Internet-based business called Sunshine Serpents. It started in 2003 and expanded as he and his partners guided tours throughout the state, sold reptiles and held lectures at shows. People can also buy snakes and have the reptiles shipped to them through Sunshine Serpents.

“My favorite thing is being out in the field and seeing animals out in the wild,” Parker said. “It’s more of a thrill for me than keeping animals in captivity.”

On Oct. 26, a nightmare-sized version of a children’s toy washed up on a Florida beach — an 8-foot-tall Lego man named Ego Leonard, who apparently wants you to show him your world. 

On his website, translated from Dutch, reads “I am here to discover and learn about your world and thoughts. Show me all the beautiful things that are there to admire and experience in your world. Let’s become friends, share your story with me, take me with you on a journey through beautiful meadows, words, sounds and gestures.”

The site also features photo galleries of Leonard-narrated adventures with people who “befriended” the fiberglass man, as well as the mission behind Leonard’s existence. Leonard desires to be treated like a fellow being, and so wants the authenticity of quality time; hence, his ‘wearing’ a shirt reading “No Real Than You Are.”

There was speculation that Leonard is a publicity stunt put on by the recently-opened Legoland in Orlando, yet a spokeswoman quickly denied it, saying, “I wish we could say we did it, it was a brilliant guerrilla PR stunt.” Unfortunately for the creators of Ego Leonard, his journey to experience the world is on hold; the fiberglass friend is held now in custody in a Florida county jail waiting to be claimed.

Danielle Henderson, a member of the Gender and Women Studies Department, created the Tumblr blog “feminist Ryan Gosling,” which features pictures of the actor Ryan Gosling accompanied by information concerning popular feminist theories.

According to Henderson, her blog is a play off of the original “Hey Girl” meme, “fuck yeah Ryan Gosling!”, another Tumblr site pairing Gosling with quirky sayings — often in regards to things he would like to do with women.

Henderson said the blog originated as a study tool to work through dense material. On her blog’s FAQ page, she explains she was just trying to keep track of the theorists she was studying and thought feminist flashcards would be a funny idea.

Henderson said she believed only a few people would see the blog when she first posted it.

“I created the Tumblr as a joke for my classmates,” Henderson said. “Juxtaposing serious intellectual pursuits with silly things kind of breaks down a wall and allows people to laugh at themselves a little bit.”

Since launching on Oct. 8, the blog has already an excess of more than 50,000 Facebook views with nearly 20,000 followers on Tumblr, according to the site.

It has also received national press attention, being featured on such news sites as The Huffington Post, Newsweek, CBS News and Jezebel, along with many others all listed on the blog’s main page.

“It’s incredibly surprising to see such a reaction to the site,” said Henderson.

Henderson said despite the overwhelming positive reaction, she most enjoys when her students understand the posts, explaining they have a deeper connection to the jokes as students of feminist theory.

Kelly Fox, a fellow master’s student in the department and a friend of Henderson’s, said she was equally surprised by the blog’s success.

Fox explained she and Henderson were joking when Henderson posted the blog, and by the next morning it had completely exploded.

Fox added she and Henderson were afraid viewers would not understand the feminist context of the posts, and said it was great to see people understanding the blog’s humor. She added the blog is a great example of how feminist issues can be both fun and accessible.

Fox says she is especially excited the blog has allowed the UW masters program to gain national attention.

“One of my friends is famous for creating something we thought only five people would see,” she said.

The buzz of Henderson’s blog has also traveled to the UW Campus Women’s Center.

Ashley Walton-Stamps, the finance coordinator for CWC, said it has been a main topic of conversation among the coordinators there.

Walton-Stamps said she enjoys how the blog brings feminist issues to the forefront by using humor unlike the harsh tones characterizing other feminist blogs.

Walton-Stamps said she believes it was a great approach to use Gosling, referring to him as “Hollywood handsome” and said it is the blog’s main comical aspect.

“We appreciate it and think it’s wonderful,” Walton-Stamps said.

“Too soon.”

It would seem that there is an off-limits period when making jokes about sensitive subjects. When this period ends, no one knows. Which tragedies are subject to the doctrine of “too soon” is also often a mystery. Yet, despite its nebulous boundaries, “too soon” has become a rule of thumb, a snap reaction to any light-hearted material that lies outside of one’s comfort zone.

Two days after Muammar Gaddafi was killed in Libya, he became the inspiration for my Halloween costume at the suggestion of a creative friend. I think it’s a great idea. With his distinctive dress and newsmaking ability, Gaddafi is guaranteed to get a smile from any politically conscious partygoer. And yet, as I have pitched this idea to friends, I have heard those inescapable two words a number of times. “Too soon for Gaddafi humor,” friends have told me. “Why don’t you give it at least a couple of weeks?”

Why? A man’s death is always a sensitive subject, but haven’t there been instances where it was laughed at almost immediately? Consider the Darwin Awards, a collection of hundreds of stories of people who have humorously eliminated themselves from the gene pool. Ninety percent of these people are dead; many were married with children. Yet there’s no denying that these stories are funny. They’re funny no matter how much time has passed. “Too soon” does not apply. And if you’re going to have exceptions, where do you draw the line? This is my problem with “too soon”. If it doesn’t work for every situation, how do you tell when it applies?

It’s not as if it would be so hard to, as a culture, come up with a better metric. Consider psychology: As new versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders have been released, more and more mental health issues are being characterized not as a case of “you have it or you don’t” but as a degree on a continuum. Perfect health is all the way on the left, with the most severe cases on the right. Most cases, however, fall right in the middle. Why not apply this system to sensitive topics? A really mean spirited joke about Gaddafi’s death is not the same as a light-hearted Halloween costume, and they should not be judged on equal terms. For greater tragedies, more care is required.

Shouldn’t it be about the joke? The topic is no more than a vehicle for the punchline. A truly tasteless joke isn’t tasteless because it’s about a sore subject; it’s tasteless because it’s unfunny, mean and inconsiderate. I hope on Oct. 31, I’m not the only person to realize that a little light-hearted humor can always make situations a little bit brighter.

Anakin. Legolas. Wonder Woman. Death Eater. Mario. Tinkerbell. Price has taken on many identities over the past year and a half.

An American Fork, Utah resident, husband, and dad of three, Price has attracted all sorts of attention. From his wife’s blog to the local newspapers, to appearing on “Good Morning America” and to having an iPhone app dedicated to his costumes, he has created quite a stir in the media —and at home.

On his son’s second day of high school, Price waved goodbye from the front porch of the house. And if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, he did it in costume. That was the beginning of a morning ritual that continued for the 170 days his son went to school.

His dress-up streak started during the 2010 to 2011 school year when the bus changed its route and started driving by the Price’s home.

“My wife came in the house the first day of school and told me the bus is driving by our house,” he said. “We knew our son was on it, so both of us went out there and waved at him as he drove by.”

He said at the end of that first day, their son, Rain, asked his mom to not let that happen again.

“I overheard them from the hallway,” Price said. “So the next morning I woke up and put on a San Diego Chargers jersey and a helmet and went outside. That’s how it all started.”

Price’s wife, Rochelle, said she started documenting her husband’s costumes on the third day of school.

“When he left on the third day and was wearing the Anakin Skywalker helmet, I thought it was pretty funny so I went and took a picture of it,” she said. “When I posted the picture of him leaving all dressed up, everybody had a pretty good laugh at that. After a couple of days, my sisters encouraged me to start a blog.”

Rochelle said by documenting his daily escapades on her blog, “Wave at the Bus”, she encouraged her husband to continue the morning tradition.

“I gave him a little encouragement and he took it in a big way like he does everything else,” she said.

Dale said in the beginning, his costumes were pretty basic.

“Near the end though, about half way through the year they started taking on a life of their own,” he said.

Dale said even though it was hard to come up with a different way to dress each day he made a rule to never repeat a costume.

“Repeating was totally against the rules,”  he said. “I could be different costumes of the same thing, like I have two or three different versions of clowns — one is a juggling clown, one is a balloon clown, but they’re all different outfits. My rule is to never reuse them and to make it an original-looking outfit.”

At first, he used old costumes and his kids’ discarded dress-up clothes.

“Any family with kids has a dress-up box with parts and pieces of knights and pirates,” he said. “I used a lot of old Halloween costumes that my kids have worn over the years, especially in the beginning.”

Determined to never repeat, Dale started borrowing costumes from neighbors and friends when the family stockpile got low.

“When I got really desperate, I asked all my neighbors at church if they had any old costumes and they started bringing all sorts of things and lending them to me,” he said. “So they really helped me get through the end of the year.”

Dale said his neighbors and friends are entertained by his actions.

“We’ve received many comments from parents that their kids would ride the bus specifically to see me doing that every day,” he said. “It got them out of the door and got them to school on time.”

Sure, other people’s kids thought Dale was funny, but what about his own children?

Rain Price, a junior at American Fork High School, said the first time his dad dressed up, he was mortified.

“It was shocking,” Rain said. “Especially as a sophomore. It was my first year at high school and so it was the first year I had ever ridden a bus and my first year at that school. It was a whole new experience and my goal was mainly to fit in and to not be noticed for a while. And then I hop on the bus and I see my dad out there waving at me and I was just mortified as a high school student trying to fit in the first day.”

Rochelle said her husband’s behavior was no surprise to her.

“He’s kind of a teaser,” she said. “It really is just typical Dale.”

Dale said he started dressing up as a way to connect with his teenage son.

“In the beginning, it was to connect with him [Rain],” he said. “He was at that age where parents and kids really start to drift apart and so it was a way to sort of be a part of his life right then as he was going to high school. I did it to show him I supported him. I’d wake up at the same time and go out there in the cold and in the snow if it would make his day a little bit brighter.”

Dale said he wanted to teach his son the importance of humor.

“I want to teach him to not take himself so seriously and to remember to laugh at yourself, because life is really hard without that,” he said.

Rain said after months and months, he finally accepted his dad and his costumes.

“Although it still never settles in when I see my dad in a shell bra or a short skirt,” he said. “I can never get used to that.”

Despite his dad’s shocking and slightly embarrassing behavior, he knows his intentions are good.

“It’s his way of showing his love,” Rain said. “He doesn’t have a reason to punish me, especially like that. So the only reason I can think of is it’s his unique way of showing his love for me.”

Rain said all the ups and downs of the waving at the bus adventure has strengthened his relationship with his dad.

“It has only helped,” he said. “We are a lot closer from it. We were flown to New York to be on ‘Good Morning America’ and through that we were able to come closer. And him waving at me and supporting me every morning, it’s done nothing but help our relationship.”

Dale said although he started dressing up to connect with his teenage son, his adventure brought the whole family closer together.

“I may have gone out there in the costumes, but it was an entire family type of activity,” he said. “Rain was on the bus, my wife is the one who posts pictures and who got the whole blog started. I have a 7 year old, and he likes helping me get ready with the costumes. It has given us something to do together, to look forward to together.”

Rochelle said she likes what the morning ritual has done for her family.

“I thought it was a cool way to make sure everyone is up and at ‘em in the morning when our son leaves,”she said.

It took some time, but eventually, Rain accepted his dad’s behavior.

“He was fine with it about halfway through the year and we would critique things together,” Dale said. “I would ask what he thought and he’d say, ‘Oh dad, that was really cool, that was fun.’ Then I’d ask him about another one and he’d say, ‘Dad, don’t wear a miniskirt again.’”

Dale’s favorite costumes were the ones that took a little more effort.

“I really like the toilet one because it was an elaborate set up,” he said. “It wasn’t just throw something on and run out the door. I also like the headsman one, where I’m a guy who chops people’s heads off, but I don’t know if that goes over real well with some people.”

Rain said although he does have a couple of favorite costumes, his “least favorites” list is a lot longer.

“He has dressed up like Ariel, The Little Mermaid and too many things that he shouldn’t be able to fit into, but he somehow manages it,” he said. “Those always top my list of memorable ones.”

Because the bus route changed again this school year, Dale Price cut back his performances to once a week.

“Now we do it every Monday,” he said. “The bus doesn’t come down our street like it did anymore and to get on it, he [Rain] has to walk much farther to an earlier stop. He’s willing to walk farther one day a week so I can keep doing it.”

Dale Price said it’s a lot easier to come up with something to wear now that he has a week to do it.

“Still, that’s like 36-37 costumes – that’s a lot,” he said. “But it’s a lot better than 170.”

There was no alcohol involved.

Rushing, a 20-year-old biology junior, and Bentley, a 21-year-old advertising senior, represent U. Florida in Playboy’s “Girls of the SEC” issue. The issue, which features girls from the 12 SEC universities, was available on newsstands Oct. 14.

Playboy does the feature once every four years.

The university has no affiliation with the magazine, UF spokesman Steve Orlando said.

Last April, about 100 girls tried out for the magazine at a casting call in Gainesville. Rushing and Bentley, who asked to keep her real surname separate from her modeling personality, were chosen and left Gainesville a few days later for the photoshoot at Ginnie Springs.

The girls met the day of the shoot and got to know each other over hair and makeup, Rushing said.

Several of the photos include the girls holding a 130-pound alligator on their shoulders. These photos will be published in the issue of Playboy’s College Girls, a spinoff magazine, on newsstands Nov. 29.

The photograph featured in the “Girls of the SEC” shows Rushing and Bentley posing nude together, sitting on a log.

“It wasn’t uncomfortable to me because by that time we had seen each other pose separately, and we were aware of what to do,” Rushing said.

Rushing, from Tampa, read about the casting call in the Alligator and, though she had never modeled before, signed up for it.

“I thought, ‘Why not?’” Rushing said.

While the audition process was unfamiliar and nerve-wracking, Rushing felt “super comfortable” posing for the photographer.

She was informed of her selection through a phone call and shared her excitement with her six siblings, parents and friends.

She also told her boyfriend of 10 months, Jason.

“At first he wasn’t too fond of the idea,” Rushing said, “but I showed him the picture, and he’s really proud of me. He said that I looked beautiful.”

When the magazine was released, Rushing’s dad immediately went out and bought a copy, she said.

“His exact words were ‘very classy,’ and he decided to say, ‘really nice eyes,’” she said.

Aside from her newfound modeling career, Rushing began dancing when she was 3 years old and jokingly considers studying a hobby.

Bentley, from Melbourne, Fla., began modeling when she was 6 years old, posing in costumes for a dance catalog.

She didn’t model again until she was 17, when she took photos for a surf expo and websites.

After auditioning and being selected for the Playboy feature, Bentley submitted her pictures to Playboy’s editor and was approved to take part in another photoshoot for the October/November 2011 issue of Special Edition Lingerie, another spinoff magazine.

Photos from the shoot also were used in June to feature Bentley as “Coed of the Week” on Playboy’s website.

“Both shoots were easy, and I felt comfortable,” Bentley said. “Once you’ve done it once, it makes it more comfortable the second time.”

Bentley’s family, including her two younger brothers, and friends are supportive of her modeling career. Her brothers are too young to have any comments on their sister’s Playboy photos, she said.

Aside from her modeling career, Bentley owns Glow Gators, a tanning business she launched in June that offers to spray tan customers in a location of their choice.

“It started off slowly because I’m in school, but it’s growing rapidly,” Bentley said.

She said she would extend her career at Playboy, too, if given the opportunity.

In light of their experience, Rushing and Bentley have become good friends.

“We share something that a lot of people don’t get the opportunity to share,” Bentley said. “We’re two women out of a university of 50,000 people that get to represent UF in an issue that’s only published once every four years.”

Both girls said they’d always be proud of their participation in the magazine, even when they have kids.

“I would be proud if my mom was in Playboy,” Rushing said. “I’d represent that and be excited and happy about it.”

No, this isn’t the script for “Jumanji.” This is the bedlam that’s actually happening in a town just an hour east of Columbus, Ohio — which happens to be my hometown.

At least 48 wild animals escaped Tuesday from a farm just west of Zanesville, Ohio, a city with about 25,000 residents. The farm housed lions, wolves, cheetahs, tigers, giraffes, camels, grizzly bears and black bears, according to a 10TV report.

“These are wild animals that you would see on TV in Africa,” Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz said in a press conference on Tuesday.

That they are.

Many of the loose animals had been killed as of Tuesday night. The owner of the property where the animals lived was found dead but officials did not immediately say how he died.

I must say that never in my time living in Zanesville had I feared for my life because there were giraffes on the loose. That’s not to say I was never fearful of other things, such as the threat of getting stabbed in my high school, catching a stray bullet from rival gangs or accidentally walking in on a meth lab.

Nope, a herd of wild camels were never much of a worry.

Seeing Zanesville in the news, though, does make me proud. After all, how many people can say right now that the Discovery Channel is currently happening live in their modest little Appalachian hometown?

This is a town with an under-appreciated history. Not only was Zanesville the state capital for two years, it also has a Y-shaped bridge (try to wrap your head around that), and is the hometown of Michigan State head football coach Mark Dantonio and Houston Rockets star Kevin Martin.

I admit I’m a little jealous right now that I can’t be in Zanesville offering my journalism skills. Forget “All the President’s Men.” Journalists running around with their fedoras and notepads chasing after giraffes sounds much more fun to watch.

Hold on — according to a 10TV report on Facebook, there are SWAT teams in neighboring counties out to catch the loose animals. Try to get that image out of your minds: men in SWAT gear and riot protection fighting a camel.

I should probably take a second to admit that this is a dangerous situation. Several area school districts are closed Wednesday, including the district I graduated from. A person is even dead, though the circumstances surrounding his death haven’t been made public yet.

But worry not — even if the SWAT team and the teams dispatched from the Columbus Zoo can’t catch the animals, I’m sure the folks that make up the sprawling wooded area outside of Zanesville are more than eager to rush a grizzly bear carcass to the nearest taxidermist.

Regardless, this all reminds me of April of 2010, when two cows ran loose on Ohio State’s campus. Remember how big of a deal that was?

Now, Geoffrey, the Toys ‘R Us mascot, is running rampant just an hour away from here.

Like I said, this is a potentially dangerous situation indeed, but from the comfort of Columbus (well, for now), I can laugh at things such as tweets from @ZanesvilleWolf, who tweeted, “Too soon for an #OccupyZanesville joke?”

I do hope for the best for my Zanesville family and fellow “Y-City” compatriots. However, I do hope that “Jungle” Jack Hanna and the rest of the crews will round up the army of bears and wolves running loose in the streets and restore order to my quaint little corner of Ohio sooner rather than later.

God speed, Zanesville. God speed.

As my people say, dayenu: this hot mess should have been enough to teach this guy a serious lesson in etiquette. Instead, he decided to dig his deep hole deeper: he wrote an apology.

…I realize that I have disrespected you, your firm, my school, and all the alumni of Penn. I know that I do not even deserve a reply from you, but I hope that we can somehow move past this and develop a good relationship. Again, I very sincerely and deeply apologize.

Normally Bullblog would admire his repetent spirit, but this kind of self-flagellation borders on self-parody. Let this Quaker be a lesson to us all, and may you bear him in mind next time you hit “reply to all.”

A group of OSU students in United Students Against Sweatshops stripped down and protested in front of Bricker Hall on Monday in an attempt to prevent a potential apparel deal between Dallas Cowboys Merchandising and OSU.

In a group of 15 students, all sporting cardboard signs and boxes, most of the men had no shirts on while several women went with only sports bras or strapped shirts to emphasize their point.

“We would rather go naked than wear Dallas Cowboys Merchandising Apparel,” said Terasia Bradford, a third-year in French and sociology.

The protest started in the basement of the Ohio Union where the students got their signs ready and moved on through the Oval while chanting “We don’t give a damn for sweatshop sweatshirts” to the tune of “We Don’t Give a Damn for the Whole State of Michigan.”

The group traveled to Bricker Hall where they delivered a letter of delegation stating their demands to the secretary office of university President E. Gordon Gee before heading back to the Union.

Nicholas Pasquarello, a fourth-year in psychology and sociology and co-president of USAS at OSU, said the demands included having the Cowboys’ merchandising company and its off-shoot Silver Star Merchandising, disqualified from the bidding process for an apparel deal, to have Rick VanBrimmer, director of trademarks and licensing for OSU, removed from the deal and fired and that students and faculty be allowed to participate in the decision for an apparel deal.

The University of Southern California recently signed a 10-year exclusive-merchandising deal with Silver Star Merchandising.

University spokesman Jim Lynch said in a statement Monday that OSU is currently talking to license apparel companies, including Silver Star Merchandising, about an exclusive apparel model.

USAS, however, said that Ohio State has been secretly communicating with Bill Priakos, chief operating officer for Dallas Cowboys Merchandising Ltd., since spring of 2010 in an attempt to secure the Cowboys bid.

The USAS has emails posted on their website, obtained by the Freedom of Information Act, between VanBrimmer and Priakos. In one of the emails, VanBrimmer responds to questions from Priakos about making a bid.

“The only caveat is that I may be forced into looking at ‘bids,’ simply because we are a state agency. But don’t fear that process,” VanBrimmer wrote to Priakos.

Pasquarello said there are several problems with the deal and Silver Star Merchandising.

“Silver Star has been in communication with Rick VanBrimmer for the past year-and-a-half basically setting up the ground work for Silver Star to come in and take a monopolistic contract for OSU apparel,” Pasquarello said. “It’s going to wipe out the hundreds of independent contracts we already have and basically have all of our apparel solely produced by Dallas Cowboys and Nike.”

Neither Silver Star Merchandising nor the Dallas Cowboy’s organization were able to be reached for comment.

The last problem the USAS has, and why it first got involved against Silver Star, is it believes Silver Star is using sweatshops in several countries.

“Looking on the surface we have found four reports from the Worker Rights Consortium detailing worker abuses in Indonesia, Bangladesh and El Salvador and one from the Fair Labor Association as well,” Pasquarello said.

Both are independent labor-rights organizations that monitor and try to stop the use of sweatshops by companies.

Lynch said in the university statement that OSU is a member of both organizations, is a leader on initiatives dealing with fair labor practice and has scheduled a meeting for Oct. 3 with USAS representatives to hear their concerns.

In Bradford’s opinion, the university has not done enough.

“I hoped in May that the university would make some changes, but we’ve seen that the university doesn’t actually care,” Bradford said. “We are more and more like a corporation and not an institution for higher learning.”

It’s a common reaction to the 11-year-old student, who attends U. Minnesota as a Postsecondary Enrollment student.

“I was blown away,” said Long, Lucas’s chemistry professor.

It’s an easy mistake to make, since his mom, who makes the one-hour drive to campus with him every day, accompanies him to class.

“I think that speaks volumes for the level of involvement on the parents’ part, simply because they somehow have the ability to be that present in the student’s life,” Long said.

While most kids his age are studying in sixth grade, Lucas is almost finished with high school and spends most of his time on a college campus.

A typical Thursday for Lucas starts with a trip to church before his biology lecture. He hangs out in Coffman Union eating lunch, napping or reading a book he picked up at the library for “fun” — a book on the chemical property called Aromaticity.

He has a material science seminar at 2:15 p.m. and a long wait until his chemistry lab starts in the evening. He’ll walk the Washington Avenue Bridge over to West Bank on his way home with his mom. By the time he is ready for bed, it’s already 11 p.m.

Ahead of the pack

Angela Kramer said her son Lucas hit developmental milestones early.

“He’s always had that drive and excitement to learn things,” she said.

Lucas could identify letters by 7 or 8 months, read three-letter words before age 2 and read college-level books before age 5, she said.

“We just kept going with it and then I knew that he couldn’t go to school,” Angela said.

Lucas, who was homeschooled until age 7, has been ahead of the pack his whole life. He said he only has a couple English courses left to graduate high school, which he hasn’t taken yet so he can continue to enroll PSEO at the University.

Through the Minnesota Virtual Academy, which he has been involved with since he was 8, Lucas has completed classes like Advanced Placement Calculus and Biology. He said he continued with MNVA until he “exhausted all those courses.”

Lucas said he really enjoys science and technology classes.

It’s common for PSEO juniors to have a 13-credit maximum, like Lucas does, said Danielle Tisinger, who works with PSEO in the College of Continuing Education.

“Get your feet wet before you jump in,” Tisinger said.

Lucas plans to major in either chemical engineering or material science after he takes PSEO as far as it can go.

“We don’t really have many plans for the distant future,” Lucas said.

He does, however, want to earn his doctorate — something he could accomplish before his 18th birthday.

“We just take one day at a time,” Angela said. “We always say wherever God opens the door, we don’t know how it’ll work or how things will happen, but He just does.”

Lucas eventually wants to attend the St. Paul Seminary at the University of St. Thomas once he’s old enough to study to become a priest.

“It’s such a great vocation — you can help and serve so many others,” Lucas said.

While he isn’t involved with any on-campus activities yet, Lucas said he is heavily involved in his church through activities like Bible study and volunteering. He often hangs out with the children who are also homeschooled there.

Opportunities abound

Being at the University isn’t his first experience in college courses, but it does have the largest classes he’s experienced.

In spring 2011, Lucas took a physics course at Augsburg College.

“It was fun watching him help the 20-year-olds with his modern physics,” Angela said. “That I get a kick out of.”

Lucas is categorized as profoundly gifted by the Davidson Institute, an organization that recognizes gifted people under the age of 18 and sets them up with mentors, provides free educational materials and holds seminars.

Angela said it’s amazing to see the opportunities and experiences her son has had thus far.

Earlier this year, Lucas, who was fascinated by meteorology at the time, was able to visit with Patrick Hammer, a meteorologist at KSTP TV.

While Hammer meets with many kids, he said he remembers Lucas for being so focused.

“I only hope my kids are as driven at 11 as he is,” Hammer said.

Lucas said coming to the University wasn’t a “big shock” to him. The large classes became less daunting after he got to know some of the other students in his classes.

He said he will probably finish PSEO in spring 2013, at which point he said he will continue taking classes at the University for a few years. He said he might take a variety of classes “just to try and find what my interests are really before I start going.”

“No point in sitting on the couch eating Cheetos,” Angela said. “You might as well do something good with your time.”

“PSCI 291-301 is canceled.We are so sorry for this last minute cancellation. With Dr. Henry Teune’s passing, this course should have been cancelled over the summer and was an oversight,” the brief email, sent by Penn during the class, read in its entirety.

Teune, a political science professor at Penn, passed away on April 12. He was 75. After joining the university’s political science department in 1961, he had also served as chair of the department from 1975 to 1979 as well as vice dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1967 to 1969. Teune’s research interests included democracy, technology and comparative urban studies.

Despite the oversight and delay in announcing the tragic news, Penn plans to hold a memorial service for the professor sometime this fall, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian.

As reported by the Columbia Daily Tribune, the Osceola Board of Aldermen passed a resolution Tuesday, in observance of the 150th anniversary of the 1861 raid of Osceola. On this day, U.S. Sen. Jim Lane and the Kansan “jayhawkers” attacked the city as an act of the Civil War. The resolution suggests the University stop using the name Jayhawk in reference to the mascot and all sports teams.

The resolution claims that present day KU alumni and citizens of Kansas “have willfully, wantonly and recklessly disregarded the above-mentioned occurrence.” It also states that continued use of the Jayhawk is a “celebration of this murderous gang of terrorists by an institution of ‘higher education’ in … a brazen and malicious manner.”

The list of resolutions includes a request that no citizen of Osceola or alumni of the University of Missouri capitalize the “K” in Kansas or KU because these words are “neither a proper name or a proper place.”

University Relations spokeswoman Jill Jess was quoted in response to the resolution.

“A Jayhawk is a blue bird with a red head and a big yellow beak that wears boots. It would be hard to confuse it with anyone with terrorist intent, though we admit we have been terrorizing the Tigers on the basketball court for some time. Tigers have been known to kill people. Bears, too.”

As if addiction to the popular game Angry Birds is not enough, players can now take their obsession to life-size proportions with the new Angry Birds “theme park” that opened this month.

Located in Changsha, China, this attraction allows guests to catapult plush birds at green pig balloons situated throughout a brick fortress.

The activity is a part of China’s Window of the World amusement park, Changsha’s 400,00 square meter recreational attraction. Located in the American Zone next to a downsized Mount Rushmore replica, this giant slingshot was created for the Stress-reducing festival of the park.

However, the theme park is not officially licensed by Rovio, the Finnish company responsible for America’s addiction to the most popular smart phone application in history. Coincidentally, Angry Birds moon cakes were just introduced by Rovio to celebrate the Mid-Autumn festival in China. There will also be a limited edition of the Angry Birds app called “Moon Festival” be released next month.

Rovio declined to comment to ABC news, but a lawsuit is not expected because the attraction is to close at the end of September.

Schmidt is also the founder of the political party called the Work Less Party of British Columbia. The ride originated in Vancouver, and it wasn’t long until other cities and other countries got involved. The head count of the PNBR has more than doubled from 2009 to 2010.

“I think it’s a great way to get people to recognize the issues about the use of fuel in our cities and the conservation of fuel,” said Julia Strauss, PNBR rider. “As well as the body image, I think it is very important for people of our day and age to be comfortable with your bodies and your self image because of all that’s put on the media.”

The purpose behind the event is to promote cycling advocacy, positive body image and raise awareness about fuel consumption and pollution to the environment caused by automobiles. The Philly Naked Bike Ride is a demonstration, and those involved want it to be known that Philadelphia is a very beautiful and bike-able city. The other aspect of the event, which is nudity, is there simply to draw attention to the ride itself.

“Some could call it a gimmick in a sense, but it is the means of drawing attention to it all,” said Darnelle Radford, head of the Philly Naked Bike Ride marketing committee.

“Ultimately, the bikes take center stage. The reason we are naked is to draw attention to the bikes.”

One of the WNBR slogans is “as bare as you dare,” meaning that everyone is welcome to dress as they like. It is not mandatory to bike nude. But like the past two rides, most of the participants on September 4th were all nude. Most riders wore body paint, others were fully naked. Some riders donned only underwear or spandex. There were even a few costumed riders at the event.

“I feel like it’s a great opportunity, not only to have people become more aware of the environment, but also just to have people come together for a cause,” said Amy Borch, Tyler School of Art student and PNBR rider.

“This is harmless fun. You know? People don’t get together for drag races and get naked and paint each other. Just connect with people. I’ve connected more with people on the way here than just walking down the street on a regular day.”

A common question about the event is often, “is this illegal?” But PNBR has never had any legal issues. Prior to the event, the Naked Bike Ride committee contacts the police department and tells them what they expect to happen, where they will be, and the amount of people they expect to attend. The police were at the start point, standing aside watching the riders push off.

“The ride itself is not illegal because we’re not in one specific space in a sense. The demonstration goes through so many parts of the city that we’re not in one place long enough to commit an act of crime,” said Darnelle Radford.

In order to keep involvement in the ride positive, the organizers try to add some secrecy to the preparation of the event. They do not give out more information than they have to. The exact location and starting point of the ride itself is not released until a day or two prior to the ride. The PNBR team only wants to attract interested parties, in an attempt to prevent negative intrusion.

“The ride in itself is a positive thing, we only want people who truly want to be a part of it,” Radford said. “We don’t have time to give opposers time to organize. And that’s what keeps the ride as smooth and positive as it has been.”

A turbine-powered Batmobile replica, thought to be the first of its kind in the world and based on the design from Tim Burton’s 1989 and 1991 films, “Batman” and “Batman Returns,” can be found just minutes away from campus.

Casey Putsch, a Dublin, Ohio, resident, 2005 OSU alumnus and owner of Putsch Racing, built the car himself.

The idea to build a Batmobile came to him randomly more than a year ago.

“The Batmobile came about because, quite frankly, it was probably late at night when I was like, ‘That would be cool. I could do that,’” Putsch said. “Then I looked into it and I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. I can’t not do that.’”

To make the car as authentic as possible, Putsch rebuilt a Boeing turbine engine from a decommissioned military helicopter. The engine helps the car reach top speeds of “only” between 165 mph and 180 mph, he said.

The car is street legal as it’s registered and insured for street driving, but the noise of the engine could potentially attract the attention of Gotham, err, Columbus police.

“I didn’t really muffle it, so it’s pretty loud, but nobody really cares,” he said.

The five months it took him to build the car weren’t easy, either.

Because the dimensions of the Batmobile are unlike any other car on the road today, Putsch had to build a special frame and chassis. The suspension and transmission were borrowed and modified from a Corvette. It even features a navigation system that runs on an iPad.

The design of it, however, was done in his head.

“I just know material sciences and processes and how things work together well enough that I can just think about it for a long time and think about the best course of action,” he said.

Putsch would not say how much it cost to build the car, but said the majority of the costs on such a project come more from labor, including input and design from engineers, rather than materials.

“The reason I was able to do this as just one person is because I have all the skill to build it by myself … but I also am the person who engineered it,” he said.

Reaction to the car has been wild, Putsch said. He said people tend to be skeptical that the engine is a real turbine engine, but when the car starts, people can’t help but be drawn to it.

Even old ladies with camera phones have stopped to take pictures, Putsch said.

“The people who see it will freak out and stop because it’s the Batmobile,” he said. “You can tell that boundary between fiction and reality just got broken down in their minds and they don’t know how to react. It kind of freaks them out.”

Because of that, he doesn’t drive it on the street often because it might distract drivers and cause an accident. He also limits driving it in public because he’s worried people will “maul” it.

The car was on display at a Putsch Racing open house the weekend of July 4, where Josh Quellhorst, 32, of Worthington, Ohio, and a 2003 OSU alumnus in criminology and sociology, first saw the car.

His first reaction to seeing the car was simple.

“It’s the Batmobile! What else is there to say?” he said.

David Reyes, Jr., director of marketing for the Graphic Novel Club at OSU and a fourth-year in English, was also impressed, but by photos of the car.

“Oh man, that looks sweet,” he said. “I always find it cool when people are able to combine their passions with their own personal interests. Not many people can use their degrees to achieve a personal dream like that.”

Putsch said he also considered building the “Tumbler,” the vehicle Batman has driven in the last two Batman films, “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight,” but thought the Batmobile from the Burton films was more fantastical.

“(The Tumbler’s) not so magical to me, and I think a lot of people, as the Tim Burton one because the Tim Burton one had a much more fantasy kind of role to it, so it was much more fun bringing it to reality because it never existed, it never was going to,” he said. “The Tumbler is more kind of real. It (doesn’t) exactly seem like as much (of a) challenge.”

Putsch came to OSU as an industrial design major. He requested to design a car rather than a bathroom scale as required, and when he was denied, he left the program and became a fine arts major.

That’s not what helped him build his Batmobile the most, however. That came at the OSU stable responsible for such projects as the world-record-breaking Buckeye Bullet.

“The biggest credit I can give to Ohio State regarding my ability to build the Batmobile came from everything I learned at the Center for Automotive Research,” he said.

Putsch’s Batmobile has since gone viral, being featured on MTV, Engadget, Yahoo! News and BBC’s “Top Gear” website, among others. But, he said, that’s not what he’s most proud of.

“The thing that makes me happy is just the fact that it works exactly the way I thought it would, perfectly, the first time,” he said. “I haven’t had to change anything. Nothing’s broken. I haven’t adjusted anything. It’s been perfect.”

Google Street View allows users to view images that Street View trikes, cars and snowmobiles capture of streets, schools, hikes, zoos and anything else that Google Maps users want to see on the site.

“They are doing all of the state and city parks, they even did the Honolulu Zoo. … It’s really just trying to get them everywhere that would be good for people to navigate,” said Colin Macdonald, an instructor at UH who Google contacted about mapping the campus.

The Street View team in Hawai‘i has already finished mapping the UH campus, including the Lyon Arboretum, the aquarium in Waikīkī, and the athletic complex.

“We tried to get it to be as comprehensive of the far corners of the campus as we could. At one point we were talking about having them go into Stan Sheriff [Center] arena because there is a ground-level entrance, but the concern was the second they got in there they would lose all of their GPS, and therefore it’s really tough to know where it is,” said Macdonald.

The Google Trike has eight cameras, GPS and lasers, which make it easier to accurately place the images. The pictures are put together in a 360-degree view, blending together the overlapping elements that are created between the eight cameras. This process, as well as the steps that Google takes to protect people’s privacy, means that it takes a while before the images are ready to be uploaded to Google Maps.

“One of the concerns that we had with this was privacy, because one of the things that Google has been knocked for – rightly and perhaps not rightly – over time has been privacy issues,” said Macdonald. “While they were doing our Street View … if they saw someone’s face, the software automatically blurs out the person’s face or a license plate on a car. And finally they said that if there were things that we did not want to get mapped then what Google will do is to blur it out for you. So it was up to our discretion to say that we did not want people to see some things and they would blur it out for us.”

This mapping can aid students in navigating the campus.

“If you wanted to say ‘meet me in front of the Campus Center’ or ‘meet me in front of Student Services’ a lot of people have no idea how to get there. … Even for people who have been on campus a lot, trying to find something is difficult,” said Macdonald.

The Street View trike is scheduled to leave O‘ahu some time in July and either head over to Maui or the Big Island and finish in Kaua‘i. They hope to map Mauna Kea and the observatories on Kīlauea.

“With Street View, you get the view that you would like to get. It’s a wonderful service for the campus just internally, [and] it’s also a wonderful service in being able to reach an audience that literally reaches around the world – and it costs us nothing,” said Macdonald.

Coyne was one of the nearly 200 participants jumping into the frigid waters in 34-degree weather, according to Lauren Baldwin, Badin Hall president.

“It was the most refreshing experience of my life,” freshman Andy McAsey, who was part of the first group to enter the water, said.

A total of eight heats of 21 people ran into the ice-cold water on Saturday, starting at 2 p.m., Baldwin said.

“It felt like pins and needles on my feet but otherwise I’m fine,” junior Ronnie Kadykowski said.

“It was so cold that you can’t even feel it,” freshman Sarah Eide said. “You just get numb. It was awesome.”

Upon arriving at the plunge, students signed up and were entered into a raffle for gift cards for restaurants on Eddy’s Street Commons and for gifts from the Hammes Notre Dame Bookstore. They also gave donations to the Hope Initiative, Margaret Bellon, Badin Hall vice president, said.

“The Hope Initiative inspires hope through benefiting education for children in Nepal,” Bellon said.

Howard Hall fellow and professor Ann-Marie Conrado runs the charity, Baldwin said. This year, the plunge raised more than $900.

Baldwin said she and Bellon have been working on the event with D.J. Barry, Dillon Hall president, and P.J. Flynn, Dillon Hall vice president, since October. They set up a Polar Bear Plunge committee of Badin girls after winter break to make this event as successful as possible.

Baldwin said the committee set up a gathering spot by two heaters and provided towels for participants. They had hot chocolate, cookies and brownies for everybody to enjoy. The committee also added live music half way through the event and made the event a dorm competition.

“The worst part was getting out of the water,” freshman Deanna Kolberg said.

One of the goals of the event coordinators was greater publicity, Bellon said.

Many students said they enjoyed the event.

“This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time,” sophomore Mike O’Brien said. “I wish it could have lasted longer. As soon as we were in, we were out. I could have been in there for 10 minutes.”

“It was the most exhilarating moment of my life thus far,” freshman Andrew Aaronian said.

Other students did the plunge for different reasons.

“I did it because it is on my ND bucket list,” senior Sean Kickham said. “Got to get it done before I graduate in May.”

Freshman Christine Allen and her friends dressed up for the event. Allen, dressed as a football player, said, “I did the plunge because I wanted to prove I’m not a wimpy Californian.”

“The Polar Bear Plunge shows how much people at Notre Dame care about contributing to important causes and I am glad to be a part of it,” Baldwin said.

Matt Genitempo and Jonathan Standefer, Baylor U. alumni, saw the potential to profit from, and have a good laugh at, the most ridiculous Facebook content. So they created the Facebook parody website Lamebook.

“We started Lamebook a little [after meeting], and after a few months of doing that it got so popular that we were able to quit our jobs at the offices and do that full time,” said Genitempo, who graduated in 2007 with a degree in graphic design. “That brought a lot of other different design opportunities for both of us.”

While Genitempo and Standerfer, who graduated in 2005 with a degree in film and digital media, were just acquaintances in college, they became friends after graduating and went on to create Lamebook.com, which focuses on posts made by Facebook users.

Lamebook quickly became successful enough for Facebook to take note. Lamebook’s play on Facebook’s copyrighted name and logo led Facebook to threaten the company with a trademark infringement lawsuit in March 2010.

One of Lamebook’s lawyers, Conor Civins, said that after being contacted by Facebook, Lamebook owners decided to file a lawsuit for a declaratory judgment, which means they sued Facebook first in order to gain a preemptive judgement stating that no copyright infringement exists.

“[Lamebook] is a parody website; it’s supposed to be social commentary and it’s protected by free speech,” Civins said.

About a week after filing their lawsuit, Lamebook owners heard back from Facebook’s lawyers in California.

“It literally exploded overnight,” Standefer said. “And that next week we got countersued by Facebook.”

Along with their lawyers in Texas, where their lawsuit was filed, the owners of Lamebook have counsel in California and have been working closely on what Civins called “a strong case.”

Despite having a strong case, Civins admitted that Facebook is tough opposition.

“Facebook is a corporate giant with limitless amounts of money to throw at the case,” Civins said. “But Lamebook has hired very good intellectual property lawyers … We know a lot about this kind of lawsuit.”

The case between Lamebook and Facebook is still ongoing, and Genitempo and Standefer are doing everything they can to stand up to the social media giant, including nonconventional methods like throwing a party on Jan. 21 dubbed “You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Parody!”

They ask for support in their efforts against Facebook on their website, saying, “We really love running Lamebook. Aside from the laughs, it represents an opportunity to work on an incredibly fun project with our buddies that makes a lot of people happy and still allows us to make rent at the end of the month … Problem is, Facebook didn’t get the joke. They’ve decided to pick on the little guys: small business owners who seem to be no match for a multi-billion dollar behemoth. But this is one website that’s not going down without a fight.”

Facebook is just as resolute in its decision to beat Lamebook in court.

In a statement released on Fox 7 in Austin on Nov. 5, Andrew Noyes, communications manager for Facebook, said: “It’s unfortunate that after months of working with Lamebook to amicably resolve what we believe is an improper attempt to build a brand that trades off Facebook’s popularity and fame, they have turned to litigation. We are confident in our position and believe we will prevail in court.”

Aside from the controversy surrounding their biggest project, Lamebook, these Baylor alumni are busy with several projects, including the publishing of a best of Lamebook.com book, co-written by Josh Huck and published by Chronicle Books. The book will be released around September.

Additionally, Genitempo and Standefer are embracing their website’s popularity in the digital universe.

“We’re having a [South by Southwest] party along with the other blog, Texts From Last Night, and a few other pretty popular blogs,” Genitempo said, discussing the popular Austin music festival in March.

Genitempo is also part of another blog called Public School, which is composed of a team of designers who post different aspects of design and creative work.

“Public School is basically a group of creatives who got together because we were sick of designing from home and wanting to be in a creative environment,” Genitempo said.

Standefer and Genitempo advised students who are taking classes in the art department to not limit themselves to the curriculum suggested by advisers and to take classes that seem interesting, even if they aren’t necessarily required.

“All the people that I really respected in the art program and all the students whose work I enjoyed were all doing extra stuff, and I don’t think that you can do great things out of the art department if you’re not doing anything extra,” said Genitempo. “It’s a very competitive field.”

Standefer and Genitempo are in the process of coming out with a new website, one with content and a URL that will be released later.

Students can visit Lamebook and Public School at www.lamebook.com and http://gotopublicschool.com.

Paul Janssen has taken his play with Legos to the next level. In fact, he has taken it to about every level of Ohio Stadium.

Janssen is an OSU associate professor of physiology and cell biology and an associate professor in cardiovascular medicine. He finished two years of construction on his Lego replica of Ohio Stadium on Jan. 1.

The 8-foot-by-6.5-foot replica will be composed of more than one million Legos after the finishing touches are put on the stadium. And yes, it is and will be composed of only Legos.

“I really tried to build the whole thing as a Lego purist,” Janssen toldThe Lantern. “It becomes less of a challenge if you modify the pieces.”

Janssen began collecting Lego pieces for the project in 2005 using pieces of his own collection, borrowing from others and buying new sets in bulk. He estimated the entire structure would have cost more than $50,000 if he would have bought all new pieces for the project.

“Lego products range from $1.99 to $499.99, and average sets are between $29.99 and $49.99,” said Julie Stern, Lego Brand relations manager.

Janssen took about 20 pictures of Ohio Stadium to create his own blueprint for the build. His construction started in May 2009.

He built the stadium in his basement and “worked on it in spurts,” he said. He did most of the building on Saturday and Sunday mornings between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m., he said, because his wife and three kids were still sleeping and he could have more time with them later in the day. He built the replica entirely on his own without help or bothering his family, he said.

Janssen played with Legos until he was 13, and then went through a period in high school and college when he put the hobby on hold because he was too busy with school. Lego builders call this period “the dark ages,” he said.

After earning his doctorate in his homeland, the Netherlands, Janssen moved to the U.S. and brought his childhood Legos with him. He came out of “the dark ages” and began building again 10 years ago, he said.

Lego building is a common hobby among many ages, Stern said. Most Lego purchases are made for children ages 5 to 12, however, many Lego customers are avid adult builders and artists.

“We have fans from 2 years old all the way to 102. You’re never too old to play with Lego bricks,” Stern said.

In accordance with his hobby, Janssen co-founded the Central Ohio LEGO Train Club (COLTC) in 2003 with four other adult Lego fans. The COLTC is a non-profit organization for adults that have “(re)discovered the joy of building creations out of LEGO brand building blocks,” according to the club’s website.

Janssen is the club’s president.

“We get together about once per month to either talk about our latest creations, newly released sets or pieces, sales, trade Lego elements, or we get together to participate in public showings of our creations,” he said.

Janssen has built Lego trains and Columbus skyscrapers reaching 5 to 6 feet tall.

“I have also built fantasy buildings. I built a medieval village with a town hall and some farms,” he said.

Ben Coifman, OSU associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, met Janssen though COLTC six years ago. Coifman favors building Lego train sets.

Janssen and Coifman have since paired up to teach a freshman seminar called the “Art and Science of Lego Bricks.” New topics are covered each week regarding the history of Lego Group, building techniques, design and marketing of Lego, adult fan websites and how professional artists use Lego as an art medium, Janssen said.

“The required text for the class is a Lego set. We still haven’t gotten the bookstore to stock it though,” Coifman said.

During Spring Quarter, the seminar will be offered for its third year.

Janssen said he enjoys Lego building because it’s challenging, relaxing and he has always enjoyed counting and sorting pieces.

“After a long session of build it actually feels like you accomplished something,” he said.

Janssen contrasted Lego building to video gaming where there is no physical evidence of completing something.

On Jan. 4, Janssen posted images of his Ohio Stadium replica on mocpages.com, a site designed to post and share Lego creations. As of Tuesday night, the post had received 42,788 views since its upload.

“I really just built it (Ohio Stadium) to build. It’s my hobby. It’s very relaxing,” Janssen said. “I thought the shape of the stadium was such an enormous challenge. Round things are easy to build, but the Horseshoe is more difficult. It’s an extremely challenging shape to do, that’s what drew me to it.”

Coifman said he hasn’t seen the completed replica yet, but “it is a fantastic model and is sure to be a crowd pleaser, easily recognizable and the thing is huge. The details are incredible.”

The replica has 10 sections, each weighing between 30 to 60 pounds, plus the football field.

“It is a very sturdy structure,” said Janssen. “I could put my feet on the A deck and jump and it wouldn’t budge.”

Janssen plans to add the marching band doing “Script Ohio” and more scenery on the outskirts of the stadium, which would put the count of Legos used on the project more than one million.

He has brainstormed doing a fundraiser with the replica to allow people to purchase Lego people to put in the stands with their name on them. Proceeds would go to the Department of Physiology and Cell Biology, he said, but it is not a confirmed plan. The replica has a capacity of 6,000 Lego people.

He would like to display the replica at the Ohio Union or the Wexner Center, he said, but has not yet looked into the request.

Janssen said he has no future building ideas or projects at the time and has no plans to build a structure as big as Ohio Stadium anytime soon.

“We might be playing with a children’s toy,” Coifman said, “but we build complicated and realistic-looking models.”

Conway is on display in the main room of the OHS. He was initially installed so that visitors would descend a staircase and get an optimal view of the skeleton in the process. Media Relations chief Kim Schuette said that after moving the entrance of the museum to better suit handicapped visitors, guests would enter to the sight of Conway’s rear-end.

Bob Glotzhober, the senior curator of natural history, said that rotating the remains wasn’t as simple as it seems.

“It’s a very delicate process,” he said.

So delicate in fact that the process took four days of work from 10 professionals to pull off. The museum had additional volunteers to videotape the procedure and keep the crowd away from the work (the museum stayed open throughout).

The process came down to five steps. First, workers had to remove the tusks. Although realistic looking, the tusks attached to the skull are actually fiberglass replicas, because the bony body isn’t strong enough to support the weight of the originals.

Following the tusks, the entire head was removed, followed by the legs. The last part of the body workers had to move was the rib cage and backbone, which were supported by a platform while the supporting legs were removed. The platform was moved to its new location and the rest of the body was reattached.

Conway, who got his name from the man who discovered him, was unearthed in 1887. The remains traveled as display to carnivals before making stops at a number of museums and settling at the OHS in 1993.

Although the process of moving the remains was a mammoth one, Conway is not actually a Woolly Mammoth. He is a mastodon, another elephantine mammal that roamed the Great Lakes region. Although woolly are like their mammoth brethren, Glotzhober said that mastodons are actually closer relatives to modern-day elephants than they were to mammoths. They were also much more populous in Ohio, with an estimated three mastodons present for every mammoth.

Although both are now extinct, Columbus residents can now get a glimpse of Conway, a remaining monument to the mastodon species. And not just his behind.

On Thursday afternoon, 20 billboards around the Columbus area began displaying a message congratulating TCU on its 21-19 Rose Bowl victory over Wisconsin. The ad takes a direct shot at Gee, who hurled insults at TCU and other non-BCS conference schools in late November.

“I do know, having been both a Southeastern Conference president and a Big Ten president, that it’s like a murderer’s row every week for these schools. We do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor,” Gee told The Associated Press on Nov. 24. Gee was also chancellor at Vanderbilt from 2000–07.

That infamous line capped off the billboard, which read, “Congratulations to TCU for their Rose Bowl victory — Little Sisters of the Poor.” The ad runs on the digital billboards once per minute, for eight seconds.

After receiving public backlash, Gee acknowledged that his comments were out of line.

“What do I know about college football? I look like Orville Redenbacher,” Gee told The Columbus Dispatch on Dec. 1. ”I have no business talking about college football.”

Robert Rankin, president and general manager of Clear Channel Outdoor Columbus, which operates the digital display, would not disclose the price of the billboard ad or reveal who purchased the ad space.

“It’s certainly TCU interests, and they are outside of the state,” Rankin said. “I haven’t sensed that there’s anything going on here except for gamesmanship. There’s no malice.”

TCU officials denied any university affiliation with the billboards.

“TCU did not create the billboards surrounding Ohio State, nor did it have a role in placing them there,” said Lisa Albert, TCU spokeswoman. “The university does not have any information about who did create these billboards.”

Rankin did not say when the billboard would be removed.

“It’s a short-term proposition,” he said. “We’re not sure yet how short-term.”

Rankin did say the process in which the message was proposed, and then accepted, was fairly quick. This can be typical of digital ads, he said.

“This all came down in short order, certainly less than 72 hours,” he said. “That’s one of the beauties of what is still a relatively new medium, in central Ohio anyway.”

TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte responded to Gee’s comments in November, by challenging the Buckeyes on Dallas radio station KESN-FM.

“Anytime, anyplace, anywhere,” Del Conte said. “Buckeyes against the Horned Frogs. Tee it up. Let’s go.”

TCU will join the Big East Conference, effective July 1, 2012. The Big East is one of six conferences that have an automatic qualifier for a BCS bowl.

The “Jersey Shore” star seems to be taking the “write what you know” approach, since the plot of her book (viewed here) sounds almost exactly like the reality show: two cousins rent a house on the shore to have “the sexiest summer ever,” which includes “hot guidos, cool clubs, fried Oreos, and lots of tequila.”

The New York Post posted a few sentences from the book on its website, including this gem: “He had an okay body. Not fat at all. And naturally toned abs. She could pour a shot of tequila down his belly and slurp it out of his navel without getting splashed in the face.”

If this sentence is any indication, the book is going to be just as much of a train-wreck as the show.

It irks me that someone like Snooki, who, to my knowledge, has never been shown reading or expressing interest in writing on the show, gets a book deal, while there are hundreds of more capable writers out there with better stories to tell.

I understand that plenty of authors put a bit of themselves in the main character, however, Gia, the “pint-sized” cousin, sounds exactly like Snooki herself. Couldn’t she have at least been creative enough to put her personality into a girl that doesn’t look like her? Apparently in addition to working at a tanning salon, Gia also somehow manages to rescue a shark on the beach and become a local celebrity.

I do have to give Snooki slight props for piquing my interest at how this tiny girl rescues a shark, but not enough for me to actually read the book.

“The Official High Times Pot Smoker’s Activity Book” by Natasha Lewin and The Editors of High Times Magazine

This book offers pot smokers everywhere games and party ideas to use while high. The editors of High Times magazine, “the world’s most trusted authority when it comes to getting baked,” (according to the publisher’s press release) wrote the book. “Weedoku” puzzles and “Toker Poker” are some of the games that are featured, but readers can also discover tips for hosting a ganja dinner party and how to better conceal the smell of their illegal habit. Readers can look within the front pages of the book to learn how to give themselves dreadlocks the “right way,” using bee’s wax, or the “wrong way,” using glue. There are “dozens of stoney-day” activities to keep any pot smoker entertained, according to the book’s cover.

“Let Me Put My Poems In You” by Matty Cox

This book is about everything the title suggests, but in poetry form — or “smut poetry” as the publishers call it. Think Tucker Max, only this author offers a different approach. The poems range in style and length, but the subject matter almost always features sex, women or alcohol. If you need any further description of this book, read this one-line poem featured in the opening pages, titled “Peter Piper, That Dirty Bugger:” “Peter Piper piped his peter in betweener.” That about says it all about this book.

“The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex” by Kristen Schaal and Rich Blomquist

Well, if you couldn’t guess, this book is about sex. It’s written by Schaal, a comedian and actress on HBO, and Blomquist, a writer for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” which automatically turns the book into sex comedy. It’s complete with charts, illustrations and graphs, all of which are a spoof on the reality of sex. The book includes, among many other things, a sex hall of fame, the future of sex and a section dedicated to the dark side of sex, which ranges from several STDs to what the authors call a “female stomach parasite,” also known as a “kickworm” or “bun in the oven.” Obviously this book isn’t meant be used as an educational reference, but it’s good for a few laughs.

ESPNShop.com today listed a Wisconsin Badgers 2011 Rose Bowl Champions T-shirt for sale, a whole four days before the game is even to be played against TCU. There is no such shirt listed on the site for the Horned Frogs.

News of the apparent online listing mishap appeared earlier this afternoon, and was even brought to the attention of Horned Frogs head coach Gary Patterson. Still, ESPN Shop has the shirt listed for purchase on their website as of late Monday night, giving Badger fans a chance to buy their very own pre-determined piece of history.

Oftentimes, I do so through normal human interaction, and I have even made things awkward via text message. However most recently, a stone-age understanding of Facebook triggered my latest fever of dizzying shame. Allow me to explain.

Tuesday of last week around three in the afternoon, I was still reeling with the fact that I had lost my phone over the weekend.

Returning from the Verizon store where I had reluctantly agreed to put a rather large dent in my bank account, I plunked down in my chair at The Volante to put the finishing touches on the final issue of the semester.

With my goldfish-like attention span, I immediately became bored and set upon the mission of gathering all the contacts I had lost with my old phone.

Like I had seen many people do in the past, I created a group on Facebook, “frank’s friends,” and started inviting everyone: friends, family, coworkers and classmates. “Please text me your phone number,” it said with a brief explanation.

“Soon, things will be back to normal,” I thought. “Great.”

No. Not great.

Two short hours later while I was visiting my friend Jay, a younger member of his fraternity greeted me with a chuckle. “Frank, I’ve been chatting on your group for a while. Haha. It’s hilarious.”

Gingerly, I peered over his shoulder at the social monster I had created.

Everyone I knew — for the most part — including distant friends, relatives, bar pals, people who work with me, and four of the wittiest, snarkiest, most well-informed roommates a man could have were chatting and joking about me, or rather, the stupid thing I had done.

Apparently, everyone in a group can chat, and about anything.

Now, I have done a number of foolish, embarrassing and awkwardly comical things in my day. In fact, it has been a pastime of friends and family to reminisce about my fumbles during holidays, breaks and whenever we collect together. I take it well, and often enjoy hearing their different interpretations of humiliations I’ve experienced in the first-person.

But this was too much. The Internet has shrunk the world. Last Tuesday with the help of Facebook, I brought everyone I know home with me for Christmas dinner, more like Festivus actually.

After aimlessly pecking at the keyboard for a while, I sprinted over to my friend Khaled’s house. He saved my tail. We deleted the group before anyone had too much fun.

I suppose things could have been worse. In retrospect, I did receive a number of calls and messages that night from friends I had not heard from in some time. In fact, I would argue the event delivered a rather important message.

Our social networking sites and cellphones have linked us all by the hip. Without a phone, I felt naked. I tried to reconnect as quickly as possible.

In this instance, I reconnected a bit too fast, and further than ever before. I guess what I’m saying is perhaps I don’t need everyone I know immediately at my fingertips. With everyone connected and chatting at the same virtual table, naturally, I was a bit overwhelmed.

Granted I probably won’t be throwing away my cell phone anytime soon or moving to Walden Pond, I think maybe it’s best to slow down. It’s best to not send dozens of text messages a day or check my Gmail and Facebook simultaneously.

But trends are trends, and we must keep adapting. Who knows? By the time you read this, I may be embarrassing myself on an entirely different public forum. Twitter, perhaps? Nevermind, no one uses that.

That was his campaign slogan when he ran for and was elected to Town Council 12 years ago.

Not only is he wearing the cap, but he’s wearing a dark green jacket with the same slogan written on the back with Santa’s face.

Underneath his jacket, is a white sweatshirt with an airbrushed image of Santa Claus’ face with rosy red cheeks and a sprig of holly on his red and white hat.

The Santa Claus riding shotgun is a life-sized waving plastic Santa complete with a fake beard and spectacles.

“When I drive down the interstate people have to look back over their shoulder,” he said. “Sometimes their conscious gets the best of ‘em.”

Elmer said he got the Santa at a yard sale about 15 years ago. It was once mechanically animated, but after years of riding in Elmer’s car from Thanksgiving through Christmas Day, its motion has become limited. Now, Santa’s hand is tied up with fishing line in a waving position.

“After you come out of the North Pole year after year, you get tired,” Elmer said.
As he drives down Balthazar Drive in his gated neighborhood, Christmas Lake Village, he waves to everyone he passes. He passes intersections named Mistletoe Drive, Candy Lane, Tinsel Circle and Sleigh Bell Drive, to name a few.
“Oh Santa!” one man shouted.

There were some double takes, but most of the people were familiar with Elmer and his plastic passenger in the small town of about 2,000 residents.

Along with being on the Town Council, Elmer is known throughout the community for his involvement with various charities and groups in southern Indiana.
He taught elementary school for many years but now spends most of his time giving back to his community.

He volunteers by cooking for the North Spencer Community Action, United Caring Shelter in Evansville and other local groups.
Christmas, for Elmer, “means giving, strictly giving.”

“It comes from the heart,” he said. “I think we lose the whole concept of the reason for the season. As long as your decorations are for a reason, but if not it gets pretty bad pretty fast. If you take Christ out of Christmas, then you don’t have much.”

Every year the Christmas Lake Village neighborhood sponsors an annual Festival of Lights, where the public is invited to drive through and see the neighborhood’s decorations, and collects donations for the North Spencer Community Action Center, a local charity.

Elmer helps distribute the donations to those who need it most.

“We have a lot of good people here,” he said. “It makes you feel good to work with people that really care.”

Different subdivisions within the neighborhood decorate to match themes such as “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Frosty’s Evergreen Forest.”

“There’s always large displays by professionals and electricians, but there’s a certain charm to these,” said Christmas Lake Village Property Manager Mark Kroeger. “These are from people like Elmer and me hanging off the roof on a Saturday afternoon.”

Elmer portrays the Big Man as well, or at least he used to. Before he had grandchildren, he played Santa Claus in southern Indiana every Christmas.

“My Uncle Jim was the first Santa Claus at Santa Claus Land before it was called Holiday World,” he said. “That’s where I first got interested. He got me my first suit.”

Elmer and Mark both said when they shop online or on the phone, they have to confirm their address multiple times because salespeople don’t believe that they actually live in a place called Santa Claus.

“A lot of people keep their decorations up all year, especially inside with the trees,” Elmer said. “You might say it gets old, but not for us.”

Playboy recognized the course for its combination of humor and intellectual rigor.

Playboy is not the only publication to have taken notice of the unique course. The class, created by Michael Burgett, honeybee expert and professor emeritus of horticulture at OSU, has also received attention from NPR and Online Collegest.

While the class has been recognized across the country over the years, Burgett believes that the recent recognition of the course by Playboy has created the biggest stir.

“I was flattered by the recognition from Playboy,” Burgett said.

Burgett stated that he learned the course was honored in the magazine from an e-mail from a former student who is now serving in the United States military in Afghanistan.

“I guess Playboy gets read cover to cover by GIs,” Burgett said.

According to students, the class could not have been nearly as successful without Burgett’s contribution. Many students believe his extensive history and research in the world of entomology is a large part of what has made the class so popular.

“I really like professor Burgett,” said OSU freshman Kevin McElhaney. “He doesn’t tell us what to create, we create what we want.”

Burgett’s tour of entomology allows students to learn while incorporating Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” comics. The unique class has been part of the course catalogue for University Honors College students since the late 1980s. Burgett attributes the course’s success to the 20 honor students who take the class each year.

“The class is very successful because it is in the Honors College,” Burgett said. “These people are very driven.”

The course also allows students to teach one another. The class is divided into 10 student teams who give presentations each class connecting the comics to the science of entomology.

“I didn’t know anything about insects before,” said Chris Burns, OSU freshman. “I’m definitely learning a lot.”

Excepting the first class, Burgett said he does not make the class a lecture, but instead an environment where students learn from each other.

“I call myself the guide on the side,” Burgett said.

Burgett said that one of his main goals is for the course to encourage creativity in his students.

The course began 22 years ago when Burgett was nominated by students to teach a class at OSU. After the nomination, Burgett was given the opportunity to create his own course and came up with Far Side Entomology.

“This is the only Far Side Entomology taught in the world,” Burgett said.

Other professors have approached Burgett about wanting to model a class after Far Side Entomology, but Burgett maintains that his course is the original.

“It has been a fun run and I hope to continue on for as long as possible,” Burgett said.

Burgett said his objective for the class is for students to get a taste of the world of insects. His experience stems back to his service in the army during the Vietnam War, where he was first introduced to entomology. The U.S. military employs a large number of entomologists to research diseases spread by arthropods.

“For every one person who gets shot, 50 get illnesses,” Burgett said.

Upon coming to OSU, Burgett was the first official honeybee researcher on the staff. Burgett said that since retiring from the position in 2002, he has had more time to dedicate to teaching the class.

“The arrow of time moves in one direction, but when you can continue to work with undergrads, it is amazing,” Burgett said.

Elizabeth Moreau, 27, was staying at the Hilton Garden Inn, at 4075 SW 33rd Place, when she got a call telling her the hotel was on fire, according to Gainesville Police Department Capt. Ed Book.

The caller told Moreau to line her door with towels, and she quickly did so. The caller stressed to Moreau the emergency of the situation, and then told her to remove the lid off of the room’s toilet and use it to break open her window, which she did, Book said.

After that, the caller made some rude remarks, which left Moreau confused and skeptical. After hanging up, she realized the hotel wasn’t on fire and called police.

Police and the hotel were unable to track the number, so it seems the caller got away with his or her prank. During the investigation, Moreau told police she’s been stalked in the past by a man in jail, Book said.

It’s a common misconception. Just because Duvall, chairman of U. Minnesota’s political science department, has written professional literature advocating the study of unidentified flying objects doesn’t mean he believes in little green men from outer space.

“As chair of this department, I am fearful of coming off looking wacky,” he said from his sizable office towering 14 stories above the Mississippi River.

He knew it was a risky subject to take on, one that had ruined the careers of academics before him. Regardless, it’s one he feels strongly about. And it didn’t hurt that he was already tenured.

According to Duvall’s work, more than 100,000 UFO sightings have been reported worldwide since 1947. While some estimates claim that about 90 percent have been explained as a plane, satellite or some other Earthly object, the rest haven’t. Academics have tried for more than 60 years to study the latter and find out whether they’re extraterrestrial visitors. But getting university funding and the administrative green light to do so is virtually impossible. Most who’ve tried have been ignored. Some ridiculed. Others have been met with aggressive hostility, even being denied promotions and having their classes cut.

Many look to the Sept. 29 announcement that astronomers discovered Gliese 581g, the first “habitable” planet in another solar system as the dawn of a new acceptance to the search for extraterrestrial life.

Discoveries like the new planet give hope to UFO enthusiasts, including researchers who’ve struggled for funding and credibility for decades.

“It really is a scientific scandal,” said David Jacobs, who teaches a history course on UFOs at Temple University. “It’s kind of horrifying that this has been going on for so long.”

‘An ingrained prejudice’

Driving home from Denver in 1956 with his wife in the passenger seat, Leo Sprinkle gazed into the horizon and caught sight of a tiny light in the distance.

At first he thought it was a star or a planet, but then it moved closer. Closer and closer until he could tell it was “as big as a university building.” It moved around completely silently in a stop-start motion, then disappeared over the Rocky Mountain foothills.

The next morning, Sprinkle hurried out of bed to pick up a newspaper and find out what the strange thing was.

“No mention of it,” he said. “I had a sinking feeling. I thought, ‘This is something I have to study, and it’s going to be lonely business.’”

Sprinkle joined U. Wyoming in 1964 and would stay for 25 years in various psychology and counseling capacities. Despite being well-liked among students and well-rated as a counselor, Sprinkle said he found he could never move into a full professor position — mainly because he didn’t publish in the “real” scientific journals.

In 1985, he was told not to talk to students about UFOs during office hours. Not long after, he had to go home and tell his wife that his 13-year-running self-hypnosis course had been canceled. By 1989, he knew it was time to leave. “In the last few years, I realized it didn’t matter what I did,” he said. “I was being pushed out.”

Sprinkle’s experience is similar to what other academics have run into in their attempts to study UFOs. There were more like him decades ago, but nowadays, it’s become even more difficult to venture into UFO territory, said Jacobs. He would know. He’s one of a handful who still research UFOs at a major university.

Since 1977, Jacobs has taught a course called “UFOs in American Society,” which he believes is the only regularly scheduled, upper-level UFO course in the United States. Persecution surrounding those who study — or even talk about — UFOs has always existed, said Eddie Bullard, a UFO researcher and author who received his Ph. D. in folklore from Indiana U.

“It’s kind of an ingrained prejudice,” he said. “You don’t even have to think about it. It’s just not acceptable.”

Duvall co-wrote a chapter in a bestselling book released in August compiling UFO accounts from esteemed military personnel. In his writing, Duvall has argued that the “UFO taboo” is deeply entrenched in our society. It’s perpetuated, he writes, by the mainstream media, the scientific community and the government, which retains its power from the notion that humans make the rules.

Those who approach the subject as a social or cultural phenomenon tend to get less flack because they can remain negative or neutral toward the existence of UFOs, Bullard said.

“If I were to take a sociological or psychological approach, I would be on firm ground,” Jacobs said. “In fact, I’d be hoisted on the shoulders of my colleagues as a hero.”

Getting funding is a whole new can of worms. There’s a peer-review process for grant applications, and a committee decides whether the $6 million for research goes to “you, or the rival university across town,” said Don Donderi, professor emeritus at McGill U. and a UFO researcher.

“You have to fight for this money and propose things you know will be acceptable to the people who read them,” Donderi, who still teaches a lecture on UFOs at McGill through its “Freaky Friday” series, said.

In this setup, “no one’s going to give a damn” about an idea related to a phenomenon, Donderi said. Today’s science community is a “different world entirely,” he said, one that’s dictated by administrative paradigms.

Jacobs gives three reasons for academia’s increasing hostility toward UFO research. The first: the rise of conspiracy theories. When UFO sightings are connected to government cover-ups, it makes the subject less applicable to scientific inquiry. Then there’s the Roswell case, in which some believe aliens crashed in New Mexico. Not only does this require belief in a conspiracy, but also that alien corpses are still being studied. Finally, there are abduction stories, which can seem pretty far-fetched. Together, those things encourage people to dismiss the whole subject as “nuts,” he said. Before all that, scientists could simply study the phenomenon.

“It was pure,” Jacobs said. “Now, you have all this other popular culture stuff getting in the way, and people think this is popular culture.”

Having published four books and countless journal articles on UFOs, retained his teaching position and gained tenure, he’s somewhat of a success story — but he doesn’t see it that way.

“I’ve tried to be full professor many times,” he said. “I’m 68 years old. It’s not going to happen.”

‘Fundamentally unscientific’

Skeptics point to the fact that there’s just not a lot of physical evidence to warrant study.

“Can somebody hold up a steering wheel and say ‘This is from a UFO?’” Terry Jones, an astronomy professor at U. Minnesota, said.

“How about a spare part from an alien craft? An alien cigarette lighter?” Harvard U. professor Paul Horowitz said. “What you get instead are stories.”

But there are a lot more than stories, Jacobs insists. There’s an ever-increasing collection of photographs, videos, radar images, markings on the ground and other physical traces of alien presence that most skeptics won’t even look at.

For scientists to ignore that evidence is “fundamentally unscientific,” Jacobs said. “They revert to being unscientific almost immediately when you go into the subject.”

Alexander Wendt, an Ohio State U. professor and Duvall’s co-author, said the radar images were what ultimately convinced him UFOs must be studied.

According to Wendt, there are images that show objects moving impossibly fast and taking right turns at 1,000 mph, a speed that would impose enough g-forces to kill a human. That’s a physical phenomenon that must be explained.

“It’s not just a product of our imagination,” Wednt said.

In their work, Wendt and Duvall point out that UFO skeptics maintain an authoritative belief — upheld as a scientific fact — that UFOs are not extraterrestrial and therefore can be ignored.

Further, they argue, modern science and government are deeply connected. Modern governments are made possible through modern science, and modern science is sustained through modern governments.

The idea that UFOs aren’t researched due to a fear of humans losing their sense of control over their destinies doesn’t sit well with Lawrence Rudnick, an astronomy professor at the University.

As someone who’s spent his life studying stars, planets and galaxies, Rudnick — who made international headlines in 2007 when he discovered a giant void in the universe 6 billion trillion miles wide — said scientists know humans lost their dominance long ago.

It all started with the realization that Earth wasn’t at the center of the universe. Then Earth became one of several planets going around the sun. Humans were certainly dethroned when science revealed countless stars, planets and galaxies in the universe, Rudnick said.

“To search for existence of alien life would not diminish us further, but in fact would enrich our relationship with the universe to know there were others like us,” he said.

Still, there are too many other things worth studying that are of higher value, Rudnick said. It boils down to funding and — more importantly — time, he said.

In order to be worthy of scientific study, a subject needs to be measureable, and observable and it must be able to yield an answer worth having and there must be a reasonable chance of finding a meaningful answer. UFOs meet the first two criteria, but not the third, Rudnick said.

As an astronomer, Rudnick often gets questions about 2012 doomsday prophecies, astrology and intelligent design — and puts them in the same category as UFOs in that the evidence is too small to justify studying them.

“Is it possible that some UFOs represent visits from extraterrestrial beings? My judgment as a scientist is ‘Perhaps,’” he said. “But the probability of that being true is so low, it’s not worth my time.”

‘The end of our isolation’

From his lab on the Harvard campus, Paul Horowitz has spent the better part of his career feeding an insatiable desire to be the first to discover signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

“It would be the end of our isolation in the galaxy,” the physics and electrical engineering professor said excitedly. “You can’t find adjectives wonderful enough to describe it.”

For two decades, Horowitz has been monitoring a collection of optical and radio telescopes scanning tiny patches of the galaxy. He hasn’t found anything yet, but doesn’t plan to quit anytime soon.

While some people might think spending all day scanning outer space for signs of life sounds crazy, Horowitz’s research is much “safer” than UFO research.

In fact, in 1975, NASA began devoting small portions of its budget to search for extraterrestrial intelligence out of the Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in California.

The funding was temporarily cut off in 1981 after former Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis. , who gave it his “Golden Fleece” award for being a waste of taxpayer money. Astronomer Carl Sagan eventually convinced Proxmire of the merits of the research, and funding was reinstated in 1983.

In 1984, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute was created to increase the efficiency of NASA’s SETI program.

Beginning in 1992, NASA strengthened its existing commitment to the field by embarking on an ambitious, 10-year, $100-million extraterrestrial search program.

But Congress wasn’t enthused. Less than a year later, Sen. Richard Bryan, D- Nev. , cut off NASA’s extraterrestrial research funding, or what he called “the Great Martian Chase.”

At the height of its support in 1992, NASA spent $12. 2 million on SETI research, which was only 0. 1 percent of its total budget. Over 18 years, NASA spent nearly $57 million on the cause.

The end of NASA funding didn’t mean the end of SETI. The nonprofit SETI institute is still going strong, with an operating budget for its SETI research of about $3 million that comes entirely from private donors. About 40 researchers who work in the institute’s astrobiology unit are funded by grants from various organizations, primarily NASA.

Today, much of the institute’s research centers on the Allen Telescope Array in California’s Cascade Mountains. The telescope, composed of 42 separate antennas connected by a single operating system, was funded in part by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft.

The telescope monitors radio waves in the universe, which SETI astronomers analyze using computers, Seth Shostak, the institute’s senior astronomer, said.

“There may be some extraterrestrials that are deliberately sending signals our way,” Shostak said. “That’s a way to determine whether someone’s there without having to go anywhere, except to a local computer terminal.”

When asked about the UFO people, SETI people say they’re a bunch of kooks. When asked about the SETI people, UFO people say they’re nuts.

“We try to stay at arm’s length,” Horowitz said of his relationship with UFO researchers. “Actually, we run in the opposite direction.”

The SETI researchers feel a need to differentiate themselves from the UFO researchers because they’re on the edge of being considered within the astronomy and astrophysics paradigm, Temple’s David Jacobs said.

SETI runs on the assumption that just because human technology doesn’t match that of another life form, there’s no way it could have come to Earth, he said.

Further, they’re making a big assumption that human civilization — just beginning with respect to light-year time — is at the same point in technological development as another civilization in a couple hundred years, Jacobs said.

“They’re banking on the fact that this is still the kind of technology they’re using to communicate,” he said. “It’s a really big assumption — and here we are, swimming in evidence. The evidence found by SETI is virtually nothing.”

Although he makes sure to distinguish it from his “scientist” hat, Rudnick “the person” contributes to the SETI Institute each year. While he wouldn’t usually advocate for government funding to search for extraterrestrial intelligence, SETI is the exception because it could yield other information of scientific value.

“There’s going to be a wealth of interesting data which is produced as a byproduct of these searches,” he said, “so that creates

additional value.”

“‘Flying saucers’ mystify experts”

The modern UFO era kicked off in June 1947 when Kenneth Arnold, a pilot and University alumnus, said he spotted nine half-moon shaped disks flying in a row near Mount Rainier. Arnold’s sighting, from which the term “flying saucer” was born, became a source of major controversy when the Air Force dismissed it as a mirage.

When most people think of UFOs, they’re reminded of the infamous Roswell case, which happened about a week after Arnold’s. The two events created a buzz in newspapers nationwide.

Many believe the U. S. military recovered a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft and alien corpses in a desert just outside of Roswell, N. M. The military maintains that it was debris from a high-altitude surveillance balloon being used in a classified mission to detect atomic bomb tests.

The U. S. Air Force established Project Blue Book in 1952 to study UFOs as a potential threat to national security. By the time it was shut down in 1970, it had studied 12,618 reports, most of which were classified as natural phenomena and all of which are now

publicly available.

In 1966, the U. S. Air Force commissioned a team at the University of Colorado, led by physics professor Edward Condon, to analyze UFO phenomena. Four years later, the group released the Condon Report, concluding that further study of UFOs wasn’t likely to yield valuable scientific discovery and calling for an end to Project Blue Book, which was shut down shortly after.

Many criticized the report, arguing that it was biased. Peter Sturrock, then an applied physics professor at Stanford University, reviewed the Condon proceedings and concluded that the resulting report “completely misrepresented” the findings. He would later form his own investigation at the request of the late venture capitalist Laurance Rockefeller. The nine-person team of scientists convened at Rockefeller’s New York estate for three days. It emerged with the conclusion that more research is necessary and the Condon report shouldn’t guide current policy.

Over the course of his nearly four-decade tenure at Stanford, Sturrock, who currently performs astrophysics research at the university, analyzed nearly 12,000 UFO reports. He said he was surprised to find that they varied significantly with respect to “local sidereal time,” a measure of which part of the night sky is overhead.

“There’s a lot of work that could be done, but one person is not going to achieve much,” he said. “It needs to be opened up to the scientific community in general.”

In the United States, that hasn’t been easy. No source of public funding exists and the research that does happen is carried out primarily by privately funded groups such as the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), the Center for UFO Studies and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.

The French government released its classified UFO files to the public in 2007 after citizens accused it of hiding information. Its space agency had been conducting UFO investigations since 1977, 75 percent of which had been explained. In 2008, the British government did the same.

In December 2009, the United Kingdom closed the office it had established in 1950 to study UFO sightings. After investigating more than 12,000 reports, the Ministry of Defense shut down its UFO hotline and released a statement that no UFO report had ever posed a threat to the United Kingdom.

‘What more do people need?’

Self-proclaimed psychic Theresa Pierce, an animated woman with hot pink-streaked platinum blonde hair, stood before a primarily gray-haired audience.

She was the keynote speaker for the October meeting of the Minnesota MUFON chapter, a group dedicated to analyzing all UFO reports with the goal of learning their true origin.

“What more do people need — one to land on their front lawn?” Pierce, who claims she’s Bonnie Parker reincarnate, shouted to a mixture of enthusiastic nods and verbal agreements.

The meeting drew a crowd of about 35 people — all middle-aged and older — which is about average.

When Craig Lang, a software engineer for Boston Scientific who also provides hypnotherapy for abductees, took the stage, he described a spike in calls in recent weeks. His psychic friends describe a mysterious, yet major change going on.

“This month the aliens have been very busy,” he said, sending a wave of excited chatter through the crowd.

A woman near the back said “The world is coming to an end,” to no one in particular.

MUFON is a serious bunch. Whenever a report comes in to their office, the team assigns it to a specially trained field investigator who goes to the scene, meets with the witness, takes notes and searches for physical evidence. All told, the Minnesota chapter gets about five calls per month.

When Executive Director Lorna Hunter started in her position four years ago, Minnesota would only have about 25 sightings per year. Now, it gets about 60 reports a year in the state, she said, and about 500 stream into MUFON’s national headquarters every day.

Of all the investigations, about 90 percent turn out to have a reasonable explanation. A satellite. A space station. A distant planet. But that remaining 10 percent remain unidentified.

“Our unknowns are a big category,” Hunter said.

Many don’t report their sightings until 30 years later because they didn’t want it to affect their job or family, Hunter said. Once they’re retired, they feel safer doing so.

Some people are more “susceptible” to UFO sightings, she said. It has a lot to do with intuition. People have been conditioned not to believe in aliens, Hunter said, so if someone sees a UFO, they automatically think it was just a bird or a plane.

“Your brain filters it out and doesn’t acknowledge that it was an unknown,” she said. “People who are more open to the universe let more information through. They think, ‘That’s definitely not a plane. I don’t know what it is,’ and they’re curious.”

Shortly after U.S. astronomers unveiled Gliese 581g, an announcement 11 years in the making, their peers around the world began checking into the monumental discovery. The fanfare was short-lived. Monday, a group of astronomers from Switzerland said they checked out the area but couldn’t find any evidence of the new planet.

One of the American scientists involved in the initial discovery said more observation would be necessary.

As described by its website, the championships are “a lot like Air Guitar, but instead of rocking out with an imaginary guitar, you’re making sweet and/or filthy love with an imaginary sex partner.”

But right from the start of the competition, there didn’t seem to be much love in the cramped space of The Middle East Upstairs.

Chris Trew, host of the championships for all of its nation-wide tour, had just four participants signed up at the start of the night. He needed nine.

“I’m hustling hard for contestants. . .this has never happened to us before,” Trew said.

At first, Trew prodded the fewer than 20 attendees who populated the room to sign up, but none seemed willing to let it all hang out on stage in front of the dozens more that would soon crowd the venue.

Audience members didn’t seem too concerned about the lack of passion.

Describing themselves as Air Sex “virgins,” Emily Savard and David S. looked forward to the display of faux sexuality.

“On the female side, I’m expecting lots of fake orgasms. . .That’s what I’m here for,” David S. said. “On the men’s side, I’m expecting ludicrous behavior in general.”

One of the competition’s judges, Gretchen, a comedian from Boston who declined to giver her last name, wasn’t exactly sure what would be the winning touch for the any of the contestants, but she did know what she wanted to see.

“Beauty. Joy. Sweat. World Peace. Things of that nature,” she said. “[I'll judge] carefully. I’m trying to pay attention to nuance. . .I’ll know it when I see it.”

She got what she asked for – despite the initial low participation, seven more contestants signed up to compete.

Standout contestants, with fake names like “Nuns with Guns and Penis Di Milo,” “Diamond Dave,” “Tiny Bubbles” and “Whiskey Chick” pleased the audience with their shows of sensuality.

Diamond Dave, a Gloucester resident, showed the audience his interpretation of a peeping Tom’s attempts to spy on some unsuspecting women, crawling across the stage on his stomach to the theme song from “Mission Impossible” as if he was sneaking through the ceiling tiles of a department store.

Dave explained that his inspiration for the show was news he heard while traveling in Sweden of a man who was spying on women in a supermarket bathroom.

Tiny Bubbles’ performance was a little more informative, warning of the slippery problems inherent with sex in the shower.

“I had an idea. . .I wanted to demonstrate a concept to the audience. I wanted to show them the dangers of having sex in the shower,” Bubbles said.

During her interview with Trew after her performance, Bubbles hammered her point home that shower sex was only for the most prepared.

“I think the attempt is worthwhile, but know what you’re doing before getting into it,” she said.

Contest winner “The Cock Queen,” won over the crowd with her apparent mastery of the aforementioned appendage and earned the chance to perform at the Air Sex Regionals in New York City, N.Y.

The judges were impressed with her enthusiasm.

“The great thing about Air Sex is that it’s a comedy show, but every once in a while you see how somebody actually has sex,” said one judge. “If I could move like that I’d have eight broken legs.”

Despite the unenthusiastic start, Trew said the championships in Boston were a memorable one.

“At first Boston worried me with lack of participation but in the end the city represented well. A definite highlight of the tour,” Trew said in an email.

For future shows and tour updates, find the Air Sex World Championships on Facebook and Twitter.

Ellen Anderson, a Dartmouth College student, said she was a little bewildered when her roommates returned from their Saturday morning boat trip with armloads of pumpkins. Weekend flooding sent an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 pumpkins surging down the Connecticut River into the waiting arms of Dartmouth students and Upper Valley residents alike.

The pumpkin deluge began when heavy rains caused the Connecticut River to swell from a flow of 2,000 cubic feet per second on Thursday morning to a 44,000 cubic feet per second torrent by Saturday morning — nearly two feet above the river’s flood stage, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The river’s waters covered approximately 70 percent of Gladstone Farm’s fields in Fairlee, Vt., where the majority of the pumpkin crop had been harvested for delivery, the Valley News reported. The loose pumpkins were swept away by the waters.

This is the second time Gladstone’s pumpkin crop has been swept away by flooding since 2005, according to the Valley News.

Gladstone Farm could not be reached for comment.

The family-run Gladstone Farm grows corn and alfalfa, and raises dairy cows and riding horses, in addition to harvesting pumpkins, according to the website of Keep Local Farms, a program that advocates for the consumption of local produce.

Roy Mark, owner of Wellwood Orchards, Inc., another local producer of pumpkins, expressed sympathy for the owners of Gladstone Farm. Despite the thousands of free pumpkins floating around the Upper Valley, he said he was confident they would not affect his farm’s business.

Norwich, Vt., resident Brian Tompkins, advisor to Panarchy undergraduate society, warned that flood conditions on the Connecticut River had made taking canoes and other boats on the Connecticut River difficult and dangerous.

“I found a capsized canoe floating down the river,” Tompkins said. “When I turned it over, I found it stuffed to the gunnels with pumpkins, with a digital camera inside.”

Graham Clarke, a Hanover resident who used his motorboat to collect approximately 50 pumpkins with his family, echoed the sentiment about the river’s dangers.

“It would have been dangerous to go out in a canoe,” he said. “The river was raging.”

Trevor Scott, a member of the men’s rowing team, said the river’s strong currents made rowing upriver much more difficult than usual, although the pumpkins bobbing in the water provided amusement for the team.

“Occasionally we hit a pumpkin with an oar,” Scott said. “Our coxswain pretended it was a video game, like Mario Kart.”

Ali Procopio was one of the many Dartmouth students who journeyed to the river to collect pumpkins using canoes from the Ledyard Canoe Club.

“It was absurd,” Procopio said. “How many people have done this in their lives? What are the chances that there are pumpkins floating down the river?”

Anderson now has a teetering pile of pumpkins on her coffee table, pumpkins strewn across the floor of her apartment and pumpkins precariously lined up on her steps.

“We’re going to carve them for Halloween,” Anderson said, with an ear-to-ear smile.

Facebook’s spokesperson told Wired.com, “We’re currently experiencing some site issues causing Facebook to be slow or unavailable for some users . We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”

So what did you do during the Great Outage?  Twitter perhaps? If so you weren’t alone.

@StuffinMyBrain:” I hate to be the one to tell you but all your Farmville animals died and your crops burned. Have a nice day.”

@loubrutus DNS FAILURE: “Facebook is down which means 9 months from today, many children will born”

@Z100MoBounce “Does that mean we have to actually…. Speak to real people?”

When Matty Daley, senior English major at The College of New Jersey, and Bobby Canciello, sophomore interactive multimedia major, decided to break the record for the world’s longest kiss, they were fueled by a cause: promoting equality for the LGBTQ community. That motivation must have sustained them, because it was one of the few comforts they were afforded during the span of 32.5 hours, the total length of the record-breaking kiss.

The event, which was streamed live online, attracted viewers from around the world. Viewers from Denmark, South Africa and Brazil vocalized their support for the kiss. According to a witness, the online stream attracted over 500,000 viewers.

The two friends locked lips at 11:33 a.m. in the Alumni Grove. They stood toe-to-toe, mouths fastened and arms on one another’s shoulders for support. The pair frequently could be seen doing what looked like a kind of amateur waltz, as they stepped from side-to-side in unison, rotating clockwise in slow circles to ensure blood flow.

The Guinness World Record’s rules for the “World’s Longest Kiss” stipulate that the couple must be standing at all times and cannot be propped together by any aids, the couple must be awake at all times, incontinence pads and diapers cannot be worn, couples cannot leave the venue at any time and, of course, the couples’ lips must always be touching. Guinness also required video evidence and two witnesses present at all times.

The kissers stood under the auspices of a makeshift canopy, but that didn’t stop the heat as temperatures climbed as high as 84 degrees on Sunday afternoon.

When the icepacks that the boys were using to keep each other cool weren’t enough, a key was used to tear Daley’s shirt safely away from his body without ever breaking the kiss.

Throughout the kiss, the boys sipped water and juice through the corners of their mouths to stay hydrated. Canciello said that his research prior to the kiss led him to Naked Juice’s “Berry Veggie Machine” as a good fuel for the project. Daley and Canciello also each ingested approximately 2.5 bottles of 5 Hour Energy shots.

The boys wore headphones for portions of the kiss — Daley said he mostly listened to Lady Gaga while Canciello opted for parts of “The Illiad” and “Great Expectations” on audio.

During the final hours of the kiss, the number of spectators at the College grew rapidly. Students from the College and the local community gathered around the tent waving rainbow colored signs and cheering the names of the kissers to show their support. Passersby made donations for “The Trevor Project,” a national suicide prevention helpline for LGBTQ youth.

The website created for the event by Daley and Canciello explained the significance of the kiss.

“…in an effort of student activism, and in support of equal rights for every individual regardless of sexual orientation or gender, with an event that is sure to show the American community, and the world, that a kiss between two men (and women) can be so simple.”

According to Daley, the idea germinated after the two friends watched an episode of “Rob’s Fantasy Factory” on MTV where Rob Dyrdek breaks the world record for the “World’s Largest Skateboard.”

“I told Bobby, we should break a world record for something that means something,” Daley said.

The previous record, set by Nikola Matovic and Kristina Reinhart in Germany in 2009, was 32 hours and 7 minutes.

The two aren’t romantically involved and Canciello said his boyfriend was supportive of the project.

According to Canciello, the kiss itself was the least difficult part of the marathon.

“Just the love that we believe in was what pushed us. After a while it wasn’t even like ‘I’m kissing a boy’ anymore, it was like, ‘holy shit, my feet really hurt right now,’” he said.

Brandon Barney, sophomore English major, didn’t know the boys beforehand, but decided to get involved because of his interest in the cause.

“I fully support gay rights, gay marriage, just anything that really enhances the LGBT movement,” Barney said.

Barney was on scene for much of the event, answering questions on the live stream and making sure things ran smoothly.

Emily Porcelli, a friend of Daley’s, came from Hamilton and spent the last 16 hours watching the kiss.

“I don’t feel that gender should be big on anything, if you love somebody, love them for who they are, not what they are. It doesn’t really matter what gender they are,” Porcelli said.

After the boys’ lips parted for the first time Daley burst into tears as the two took a bow before the gathered audience. A chair was conjured up from nearby and the two sat down, Canciello first and Daley on his lap.

“About four and a half hours ago I soiled my pants with my own piss … and damn it felt good!” Daley confessed to the crowd. “Advocate love!” he proclaimed.

“All I kept thinking towards the end was I don’t know if I can keep standing but there were thousands of people watching us and I didn’t want to let anyone down, I kept pushing, and I think in the end we realized not just what it meant to everyone else, but what it meant to ourselves. You know that you did so much because one day I want to have a family, I want to have kids of my own, and you can’t do that in the state of New Jersey right now. So you keep pushing to fight for your rights,” Daley said.

The world’s longest kiss, which began at 11:33 a.m. Saturday morning and ended at 8:03 p.m. on Sunday night, lasted a total of 32.5 grueling, lip-locked hours.

The calculator, located on skipclasscalculator.com, asks 10 questions, such as: How many times a week do you have the class? How many days have you already skipped? When is your next test? Can you get notes from a friend in the class?

Hit submit and the decision is made for you.

Each answer is assigned a point value and put through a formula, which weighs certain questions more heavily than others. The value produced by the formula will fit into a range of numbers that correspond to the outcome, according to the website.

But is the website valid? According to the website, “the calculator has been run through dozens of scenarios by multiple testers to ensure the most logical and accurate outcome.”

But should people take the calculator’s advice seriously? Probably not, according to the website’s creator Jim Filbert, who said it was only intended to be a joke.

“The response from students is primarily positive,” Filbert said. “I was not surprised by this; I think students get it. They understand it’s humor.”

Some professors disagree.

“Any student tempted to engage this calculator should not only skip class, but should drop out of college immediately,” William Briggs, an adjunct statistical science professor at Cornell U., wrote in his blog.

On the other hand, Filbert said he has gotten some positive feedback from educators as well.

“Half get it and understand it’s supposed to be humorous,” he said. “They might not approve, but they still get it.”

Steven Stack, a Colorado State U. biology professor, said he wouldn’t go as far as saying ditchers should drop out of school, but said students really should want to go to class.

“Students who skip class are clearly wasting their money,” Stack said. “Any student who habitually misses class is only cheating themselves.”

David Gilkey, an associate professor in the Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences Department at CSU, said the calculator might even inspire students to go to class.

“I think that this is a good website,” Gilkey said. “I support all possible methods to motivate students for success.”

Filbert said he intends to set up iPhone and iPod applications in the near future and that the newest version of the website, launched on Aug. 19, gets roughly 1,000 hits a day. Since its start in February this year, the site has made more than 36,400 calculations.

While this number may be concerning, many students do not view the calculator as a legitimate tool.

“I think it’s an entertaining idea, but the thought of taking its advice seriously is ridiculous,” said sophomore environmental health major Jordan Padlo. “It’s one of those things you do between classes to waste time.”

During my daily Google search of my own name (wait, what? That’s not normal?), I also began a seemingly harmless query with “Why can’t…” and Google suggested that I probably wanted to type “Why can’t I own a Canadian?”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I thought my eyes were playing Canadian tricks on me. Specifically, the kind of trick that makes me see malarkey when it doesn’t exist.

Try again, I thought. So, once again, I typed “Why can’t…” and once again Google suggested that I was probably shooting for “Why can’t I own a Canadian?”

There the words stood, just staring at me, right above other pressing life questions like “Why can’t I get pregnant?” and “Why can’t dogs eat chocolate?”

That’s messed up, Google.

Naturally, I resorted to name calling after Google had offended me. I was hurt, so I told Google exactly what I thought of it.

I smacked my keyboard and eventually typed “You’re fat!” into the Google search bar.

Google snidely replied, “Do you mean phat?”

Needless to say, I was fuming. Google was anything but “pretty hot and tempting” after insulting me not once, but twice, in a matter of minutes. I put my head down on the computer desk and wept. I didn’t even feel like finishing my game of solitaire

Later, before I indulged in my nightcap, I turned to my faithful butler Jeeves, who used to be a relevant search engine, for consolation. When I began asking Jeeves “Why can’t…” the question of why Canadians can’t be owned didn’t pop up. Oh, Jeeves, you serve me well good sir.

Clearly, only Google had forgotten that the 13th Amendment states that slavery is a major no-no in this country. For crying out loud, Constitution Day came and went just last week.

And did you know that because of French and British colonists, slavery also existed in Canada, but then it was abolished in the 1830s because it’s not good? Sorry to disappoint all of you in the market for one of my people.

If you’re not deterred by the supreme law of this land, also consider the tough economic times: It’d take way too many dolla dolla bills to own a Canadian, and though my readers have champagne taste, they more than likely have beer money.

Plus, it is dangerous to purchase and domesticate a Canadian only to release it into the wild when it outgrows its cage. At that point, a Canadian will have forgotten how to forage for its own food, will start rummaging through trash cans in urban areas and then authorities will have to put it down.

Contrary to Google’s offensive suggestion, I cannot and will not be had for a price in life. I am a man of integrity. I am Nick Craddock, hear me roar.

However, if you offer me two pieces of chewing gum (sugar-free, of course), a paper clip and a gift certificate to a Bass Pro Shop maybe we can work something out regarding potential ownership.

A recent poll of journalistic integrity, which the publication made up, puts the witty, satirical newspaper on top.

On  Thursday night at U. Florida, Onion staff writer Seth Reiss, and editor-in-chief Joe Randazzo, told a packed house how much easier it is to create news instead of reporting it.

“We make news,” Randazzo said, “That’s why we’re the best at it.”

The Onion is well known for making up news and its writers’ goal is to produce a comedic outlook on political figures, sports heroes and other unsuspecting subjects.

Since its real creation in 1988, headlines have announced fake, yet shocking stories like “Al Gore Places Infant Son in Rocket to Escape Dying Planet” and “Florida State University to Phase Out Academic Operations By 2010.”

Unlike its competitors, there is a two-week lag time between pitching a headline and seeing it in print, said Reiss, and not all of the fabricated stories make it to publishing.

“Nation Can’t Wait to Wake-Up and Start Eating Again”, “Report: Every 10 Seconds Someone Dies in a Cool Way” and “Pretty Girl Name Remembered” are just some headlines that did not make it to print.

Sections, such as the strong side/weak side portion of the paper, are widely popular.

In his 2009 senior year, Tim Tebow was the target of a strong side/weak side segment.

On the strong side, the two joked, Tebow was the first 32-year-old to win a Heisman trophy, he can do a 350 pound neck-press and is really good at telling people how much he likes God.

On the weak side, he had one more year before he sucked in the pros.

Tebow was not the only U. Florida joke.

Thursday’s Independent Florida Alligator did not have Reiss and Randazzo featured on the front, but rather in an advertisement on the back with sports. And not only was the advertisement on the back, they joked, but the picture didn’t even have Reiss or Randazzo in it.

Dane Cook was on the front page of the paper, the comedic duo pointed-out to the largest audience they had ever spoken in front of, and he isn’t coming to UF until October.

Had they not been gotten a job at The Onion, both of the comedy writers said they would be neurosurgeons, adding that their entire staff has medical training.

When asked if they had ever gotten in trouble for any of their shocking, offensive “news,” they agreed that satire laws protect comedic writers very well.

“Freedom of speech protects you if you do parody,” Randazzo said. “If it’s not an event that actually happened, and no one believes it, it’s ok.”

RateMyProfessors.com, a teacher-evaluation website, has an entire judgment criteria where students can rate a teacher on their ”hotness.”

Students looking to get a “hot” teacher need only look for a chili pepper by the professor’s name.

“I can’t imagine students choosing a class based on the ‘hotness’ of an instructor. When I heard of the site and visited it, I was more concerned about my rankings in terms of ‘clarity’ and ‘helpfulness,’” said Derek Honeyman, a Ph.D. student who teaches classes at U. Arizona South. ”Am I good at communicating the material and helping students to learn it? Am I approachable? I’m more concerned about those traits than hotness.”

It isn’t a compliment to all, however, and some professors feel it gets in the way of what truly matters.

“Apparently my students think I’m attractive and don’t care about my teaching quality,” said Katie Angus, a graduate teaching associate for the French and Italian department. “If you want to find out about your teacher’s hair or clothing go to ratemyprofessors.com, but if you want teaching then go somewhere else.”

Kendal Washington White, associate dean of students, said she visited RateMyProfessors to view students’ comments and found it to be “a mixed bag.”

“Whether or not the site is helpful to students in selecting an instructor is debatable,” she said.  “I would advise students to speak with their academic advisers about instructors, and to ask students who have take the instructor’s class.”

Some students rely on the website for their class decisions.

“I use it every semester,” said Louie Benitez, a junior systems engineering student at UA. “I’ve actually switched classes for other classes that have had better-rated professor.

Not all students use the chili pepper to choose classes once they reach their major-specific classes.

“I don’t really pay attention to it,” Benitez said of the chili pepper symbol. “I’ve noticed it before but it doesn’t affect my decision-making at all. In the engineering major there’s not as many professors with those ‘hotness’ ratings.”

Regarding the hotness factor, Washington White feels it is irrelevant to the professor’s knowledge and their ability to teach.

“The website relies on student input to represent their opinions of instructors,” she said. “I’m not sure how the hotness of an instructor impacts the student’s learning experience.”

However, she adds, one must have a sense of humor about it as well.

“I personally know several instructors who have received a ‘hot’ rating, and gave them some good-natured teaching,” she said.

As useful as it is to students to receive first-hand advice from other students who’ve taken the same class as them, the website’s ratings are also beneficial to professors.

“I think students need to have the opportunity to ‘shop’ for classes and this website is just one way for them to find good professors, instructors and teaching assistants,” Honeyman said. “Students have different learning styles, but instructors have different teaching styles. I think getting a good match with an instructor is a positive thing.”

As Ohio State ran across the field before kickoff, the person dressed as Rufus, Ohio’s mascot, attempted to tackle Brutus, Ohio State’s mascot. Rufus missed in his first attempt, but followed Brutus into the end zone and the fight continued.

Jason Corriher, assistant athletic director for Media Relations, announced in a statement that the person involved in the stunt has been banned from any further affiliation with Ohio Athletics.

“The department does not condone this behavior and apologizes for the negative effects that this had on an intercollegiate event between two proud institutions,” Corriher said in the statement. “This is not indicative of the quality partnership between the universities and reflected extremely poor judgment and sportsmanship.”

Brandon Hanning, the person in the Rufus costume, said he was not upset with the aftermath.

“It was the whole reason I tried out (to be Rufus) last year,” he said. “I knew we were going back to OSU this year, and I wanted to tackle Brutus.”

Hanning, 19, is a student at Hocking College. He enrolled at OU last year but dropped out, he said. He added that he still hadn’t been informed of his firing, but didn’t care.

Ohio coach Frank Solich said he did not know much about the situation.

“A statement has been released and action has been taken,” he said. “I’m sure it’s the appropriate action. We obviously don’t condone it.

“Obviously we needed to tackle the guy with the ball, not the mascot.”

Or are we?

Every generation has had its crazy prophets shouting that the end of the world is near and that we must repent, or something to that effect, at least. This time is absolutely no different. According to executive of the Florida-based Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies Sandra Noble, the end of the world theory about 2012 is a chance for people to cash in on other people’s fears. Obviously — they made an entire movie about it.

People have always feared the end of the world. Before people started seriously thinking about 2012, the Jehovah’s Witnesses claimed that 1914 would mark the end of the world. Pretty much every major religious group has some idea about the end of the world, if not a specific date. It is a human fascination, borderlining on obsession or addiction. From Revelations to Nostradamus, we’ve got a fixation on the apocalypse — and rightly so. It will be the ending of life, the ending of humanity.

But we don’t have to worry about 2012. If the world does end then, it will be highly coincidental. The Mayan Calendar does not simply end on Dec. 21, 2012; it resets. Our calendar resets every Jan. 1, but no one freaks out about that. The Mayans possibly believed that the creation of the world happened at the beginning of their calendar, and the next time we reach that date will be Dec. 21, 2012. This does not mean that the world will end though. It could simply mean the start of a new era, as some would like to believe.

Personally, the world changing at all on this date is not likely, at least not on the scale the various crackpots and proponents of the 2012 theory would have us think. It’s ridiculous to believe the Mayans could accurately predict the end of the world when they couldn’t even save their own empire from collapsing.

Rather, it simply marks the beginning of a new cycle of the calendar, like Jan. 1 marks the beginning of a new cycle on our calendar.

We have a couple ways we can go from here. The first way is to accept completely that the Mayans could predict the end of the world or the start of a new life-altering era. The second way is to deny this and say that they simply calculated out their calendar and used it as they saw fit, and that it would reset every 5,125 years, the next time being Dec. 21, 2012. And the third is that the Mayans simply got tired and figured that setting a calendar many centuries ahead of them was enough; sadly, the empire fell before they could continue to work on it.

As comical as that last option is, the most logical — and likely — option is that the Mayans simply intended for the calendar to reset. And when we reach Dec. 21, 2012, I’m going to raise a toast for another 5,125 years of humanity inhabiting planet Earth.

When students first walked pass the posters most gasped with shock, laughed, and spewed a few expletive-filled remarks. “I had no clue what it was for,” said School of Engineering junior Boris Virnik when he saw the poster for the first time. Joseph Stucker first encountered the advertisement with his father. “Parents have a weary eye to it,” said the College of Communication senior. “I had to explain what it was to my dad when he saw it.”

Some students immediately huddled around cellphones and called the the pseudo-hotline to figure out the confusing advertisements. The call is greeted by the automated voice of Zack Pearlman who thanks you “for calling the Virgin Help Line because you or someone you know is still a virgin.” He then guides the caller to dial numbers 1 through 7 and questions “if you are a virgin, if your friend is a virgin and wants your help, if you don’t know if you are a virgin or not” and so on. Each line provides the caller with advice and jokes. Dan Stevens called the number with a group of friends. “I thought it was a little funny listening to the automated message, still I don’t think it has much of a place in public,” said the School of Management freshman. Although it may not be obvious, the ads are promoting a movie called “The Virginity Hit” in which three friends are on a mission to help one lose his virginity. Their journey is full of debauchery and raunchy humor. The movie, which will come out Sep. 24 in Boston, is filmed entirely with a portable camera and is a mix of reality and improvisation.

The digital hysteria has subsided, and now the infamous advertisements are amongst the familiar landmarks along Commonwealth Avenue. Nevertheless, BU students are still shocked by the in-your-face advertising campaign. College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences sophomore, Erika Temelkoff believes that the advertising campaign is “definitely effective, but they should have made it more known it’s a movie, not a perverted sign.”

The campaign is effective at catching pedestrians’ attention, however for some, not effective enough to be interested in seeing the film in theaters. “I probably will not see the movie,” said Boris Virnik.

Regardless of his disinterest in seeing “The Virginity Hit,” Stucker acknowledges the humor the advertisement intended to portray. “I think it’s hysterical, but COM has completely ruined all ads for me. I always think: is that an effective ad?” The advertisement is effective at capturing the movie’s comedy, yet too provocative, causing polemic in some cities like San Diego and Miami where local leaders complained. Even on a college campus students are critical of the glaring STILL A VIRGIN?

“The ad is probably not effective for a movie,” Virnik laughs. “ Maybe better for a clinic.”

Catherine Reinagel, a junior majoring in nutrition and food science, entered the contest after texting a message to a number that appeared on the screen during an episode of “The Hills.”

“I was just watching television, because I wasn’t ready to do my homework when I sent the text message,” she said. “I really didn’t think anything would become of it.”

By being one of the fastest to send a message, Reinagel won the chance to win a $100,000 prize and $50,000 donated to the charity of her choice.

The contest also includes an all-expenses-paid trip to New York to compete in the contest.

“I saw the message that said to text this message to this number and then a week later I got a phone call saying that I was chosen to participate in the finals,” she said.

Last year, a 15-year-old from Iowa won the competition. The competition was arranged with a series of tasks you had to complete that eliminated the finalists with every round.

The first task, as listed on the website highlighting last year’s competition, showcased the finalists all using the same LG phone with a keyboard and whoever typed the message the fastest went on to the next round.

Another task was to decode a message that was filled with text message abbreviations such as “LOL” (laugh out loud) and “TTYL” (talk to you later).

If she wins, $50,000 will be donated to the Laps for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Reinagel chose the charity because they raise money for cystic fibrosis research.

“I don’t personally know anyone that has been affected by the disease, but being a former member of UA’s swimming and diving team, I saw the little kids come and swim a lap for cystic fibrosis,” she said.

Reinagel knew that the money would make a huge impact on the organization because they aren’t very well known on the national level.

Reinagel chose her friend Lindsay Shepard to accompany her on the trip to New York.  Shepard is confident that Reinagel will win the competition, and is looking forward to the experience.

“I am so beyond excited to go to New York,” she said. “It is one of my absolute favorite places to go and getting to go with one of my best friends will be so much fun.

“From what I’ve seen, she is very fast when it comes to texting, which is why I know she is going to win,” she said.

Reinagel said she would pay for school, buy a new car and save the rest of her prize if she wins the contest.

“Considering I have about two years left of school, after I pay for that I should have enough to save to use after college,” she said.

Reinagel is the only finalist in the competition from the South.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture inspects Baylor annually, as part of federal regulations related to the school’s possession of wild animals. This year the USDA notified Baylor of its decision not to allow the bears on leashes in public.

“The USDA has told us we are no longer permitted to bring our bears to our games and other public events,” said Lori Fogleman, director of media communications. “The Bears remain a vital part of our traditions and of our community.”

Kevin Jackson, vice president for student life, explained that due to the bears’ age and size (Lady is 8 years old and 360 pounds and Joy is 9 years old and 345 pounds), the USDA concluded that it would not be safe to allow the bears to be unconfined in public.

“The regulations governing the public display of wild animals has been in place for some time now,” Jackson said. “What has changed is our bears have grown in size and strength over the past several years and the USDA is concerned that our past practices of having the bears in public on a leash is not in the best interest of the bears nor the public. If a bear was to break free of the leash while in public, she could be hurt or someone else could be injured, and no one wants that.”

The bears will still remain an important part of Baylor culture and campus life. Baylor has made an agreement with the USDA to keep the bears for the duration of their natural lives, which could be another decade or more. Efforts are being made to accommodate the bears in school events while abiding by the USDA regulations.

An off-campus site where the bears will be able to exercise is in the process of being built.

Harlingen senior Reece Fitzgerald is a bear trainer as a member of Chamber and explained Chamber’s new plans concerning Lady and Joy’s future at football games.

“We plan to continue the tradition of having them at games, and are currently researching the possibility of having a secondary bear habitat located at the stadium,” Fitzgerald said.

Video of the bears will also be shown at sports games, in an attempt to keep the bears involved in campus events.

“Keeping the live mascot image in front of people is important,” Jackson said. “Video will be used not to replace the bears but instead incorporate the image of our live mascots into sporting events.”

Federal Code of Regulations 2.131(c)(1) describes the handling of animals: “During public exhibition, any animal must be handled so there is minimal risk of harm to the animal and to the public, with sufficient distance and/or barriers between the animal and the general viewing public so as to assure the safety of the animals and the public.”

Chamber is still dedicated to caring for the health and safety of the bears, while sticking to their mission of educating the greater Waco community about North American Black Bears.

“We look forward to continued interaction with Baylor’s mascots for many years to come,” Fitzgerald said.

Starting Monday, visitors to Mike VI’s habitat saw the tiger enjoy his newest toy, “artificial prey,” dangling from the habitat’s canopy.

“I was there when he first came out and saw it,” said Ginger Guttner, School of Veterinary Medicine spokeswoman. “He kind of walked around it first, but then he pulled on it and played with it.”

Guttner said Mike VI’s caretakers installed the toy, which is a square-shaped parcel hanging from a rope.

Mike VI’s official Twitter account, @MikeTigerVI, included a message Monday morning about the artificial-prey toy.

“Got up bright and early this morning and found out I have a new toy,” the tiger tweeted. “Very cool!”

Guttner said she did not know the artificial prey’s specifics — like size and weight — nor could she comment on the toy’s origins and costs.

The artificial prey joins a small collection of toys found in the habitat for Mike VI’s amusement. Guttner said he also plays in the habitat’s river and pool and with various balls and a tire his caretakers give him. The tiger’s playful endeavors often wear out the toys, which are replaced as needed.

As for Mike VI’s favorite toy, however, “you’d have to ask him,” Guttner said.

“It’s important for his enrichment just to keep him involved in his environment,” Guttner said.

Mike VI, a Bengal-Siberian mix, celebrated his fifth birthday July 23, and was introduced to the University community on Sept. 1, 2007, as a 2-year-old tiger. He weighed only 320 pounds then, scales in at 460 pounds now and could reach 600 pounds by next year, according to a School of Veterinary Medicine news release.

Guttner said an estimated 100,000 people or more visit Mike’s habitat annually. He was kept in his night house during late August when routine maintenance done to his habitat every three to four years was completed.

Ronnie Haliburton, associate athletic director for facilities and grounds, oversees Mike’s habitat and said the average annual cost of maintaining the habitat runs from $25,000 to $35,000 with the bulk of the cost relating to water quality. The routine maintenance costs an additional $25,000 to $45,000.

Clocky, an alarm clock with functioning wheels, will ensure that you’re up and alert in time for that 8:30 a.m. class. Designed and created by M.I.T. graduate student Guari Nanda, Clocky is an alarm clock with a twist.

Knowing that students hit the snooze button over and over again with no intention of getting up, Nanda designed Clocky to roll off your nightstand and scamper away in order to force you to get out of bed to shut it off.

“It all started because I like my sleep,” said Nanda in an interview with CNBC. “I can never get out of bed on time and so for me, I just needed a physical way to drag me out of bed and Clocky was the first thing that came into my mind.”

If students find themselves hitting the snooze button more than once, Clocky will automatically trigger its wheels and roll off to a safe distance while emitting shrill alarm beeps that are reflective of R2-D2. Drowsy students can either rub the sleep out of their eyes and hunt Clocky to turn it off, or slam their pillow over their heads in an attempt to drown out the jarring cacophony.

“The idea is you never know where it’s going to go,” said Nanda in her interview. “You have to get out of bed and look for it and in that process you wake up.”

Users can set their single-use snooze time between 0-9 minutes. If users opt for no snooze preference, Clocky will automatically start rolling away immediately with no snooze-usage.

For folks who like the more conventional alarm clock style, users are able to disable Clocky’s wheels so that it remains stationary when it goes off. Due to its smaller size, Clocky is able to roll off heights of up to 3 feet, roll around freely on both wood and carpet, and comes in a variety of colors

The event was held Sept. 3 at the Iowa River Landing as a part of Fry Fest, and 7,384 Hawkeye fans gathered to break the record, which was previously around 4,000.

A representative from Guiness World Records attended the event and was assisted by stewards who recorded the number of dancers, the website said.

The previous record was held by Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 2003, according to the Fry Fest website.

On July 23, the lights emanating from the beacon of Kenmore Square went dark to make way for renovations that will make the 45-year-old sign more environmentally friendly and better able to stand up to Boston’s notoriously bad weather.

The sign, first put up in 1940, has long been one of the most prominent features of Boston U.’s campus as well as Kenmore Square and Fenway Park, and students cherish the sign as one of the most significant landmarks on campus.

From these sentiments came the Facebook group “The CITGO Sign is my North Star,” where Boston University students and others express their love for the sign that has led many an undergraduate home on long, drunken nights.

The group, which has 456 members, was created by College of Fine Arts sophomore Michelle Reiss.

Reiss explained that she created the group because of the sign’s symbolism.

“I knew that other BU students considered it a landmark too, so I decided to make the group as a big BU inside joke,” Reiss said.

For Reiss, and many other BU students, the CITGO sign acts as a sort of compass, directing them back toward campus when navigating through Allston or any of BU’s other nearby neighborhoods.

“My friends and I see it as a landmark for BU’s campus,” Reiss said.

“Whenever we went out at night. . . we always walked back because the T stopped running. When we saw the CITGO sign after walking forever, we knew we were almost back to our dorms. It then became a funny ‘north star’ type thing because we used it to find our way back home.”

Walt Holohan, a College of Arts and Sciences sophomore, agreed.

“I feel bad for the new freshmen, because I probably wouldn’t have found my way home without it in the beginning,” Holohan said.

Like a star, students see its light as comforting, even beautiful – despite the fact that it’s essentially just an ad for an oil company.

“At first when I started living in Warren [Towers] I couldn’t sleep because it would blink in my window at night,” Holohan said.

“But the first time I went home I didn’t want to fall asleep without it,” he said. “It’s a lovely nightlight.”

Jonathan Greenbaum, a CAS sophomore, felt that the BU campus was lacking without its guiding light.

“It won’t look the same around here until the sign goes back on,” Greenbaum said.

Boston residents and others across the country have long felt this way about the sign. When CITGO planned to tear down the sign in the 1980s, fierce opposition rose up and led to its renovation. Because of the passion the sign has inspired, it was named an “Objet d’Heart” by Time Magazine.

While the lights may be down for now, it is expected to be bright later this fall – just in time for the MLB playoffs.

According to the Silly Bandz website, Croak was involved in a company that made custom silicone bracelets, similar to the Livestrong bracelets. But after seeing the Japanese model, he decided to try something a little bit different. Silly Bandz are stronger and more durable than the original product, and unlike rubber bands, they are made of silicone, which is more environmentally-friendly than rubber. What distinguishes a Silly Bandz accessory from a regular band bracelet is that after being worn and taken off, it springs back to its original shape, which might be a flower, a star or a heart.

Silly Bandz “were originally intended for a child audience,” said Teresa Flores, a Customer Service Representative for BCP Imports, but after seeing the strength of their initial reception, Flores said that BCP Imports “started making them appropriate for all ages,” and the variety was expanded.

Today, there are dozens of different Silly Bandz themes: dinosaurs, baseball, Rockbandz, and a space on the website for custom orders (minimum 5,000 per individual shape), some of which glow in the dark. After starting out as being marketed only to children, now Silly Bandz are gaining popularity with college students as well, including those at the UA.

“They are fun!” said Amanda O’Connor, senior Pre-Dental student. “I have two shaped like teeth.”
As with any product, though, not all Silly Bandz are met with a warm reception.

“My grandma bought me a bunch of ones that are Titanic themed,” said Samantha Reeves, a junior Classical Studies and English major. “I think they’re weird.”

However, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule, to judge from the number of enthusiastic students sporting Silly Bandz on campus.

“I’m wearing a pig—a Razorback—and an elephant because they are super cute!” said Heather Rost, a sophomore business student. “And sometimes kids want to trade, and that’s cute too.”

After the first calm tomato attack from an elderly man, I thought I could direct plenty of focus on my Glad-wrapped camera. After the second barrage of fruit, focus turned to survival.

Downtown Reno turned into a fruit war zone Saturday as 150,000 pounds of tomatoes became the weapons.

La Tomatina has its roots in Buñol, Spain. Participants from all over the world come to drink, eat, listen to music and, of course, to throw tomatoes at the event.

There are many ways to engage in the Spanish tradition in Reno. You can peruse around the outskirts listening to live music along Virginia Street, survey the area from the Club CalNeva parking garage, or fight in a king-of-the-hill type game atop a three-foot pile of tomatoes.

Some went prepared for battle with shields and helmets; others took a simplistic approach with gym shorts and a plain shirt.

A fresh white T-shirt was a beacon to already completely red contenders. All white was shortly converted while tomato bits could be seen flying through the air from blocks away. The food fight is an instinctual urge during any meal, so the painted-red sky had mass appeal to the inner-child of the participants and spectators.

“I came to watch, but it looked like so much fun I wanted to partake,” said Emily Durr, 21.

The event’s Spanish beginnings were to celebrate the town’s patron saints, St. Louis Bertrand and the Mare de Déu dels Desemparats. Reno used the event to support the American Cancer Society by gathering a $10 minimum from each participant.

“(La Tomatina) gets the community involved and raises money, all while throwing tomatoes,” Paul Shanrock, a participant, said.

Being a photographer, my main goal was to capture some killer photos of tomato-red Renoites in the trenches of food warfare throughout the streets of downtown, but after a few stingers I needed some revenge, or cover.

I held my camera, lens down, in my right hand and grabbed for anything solid by my feet with my left. Artists are not cut out for warfare.

Trevor Parker, on the other hand, stuck to the surprise attack method, attacking men, women, children and photographers alike, but his actions did not go unseen.

“I got karma-ed pretty hard out there,” Parker said.

In the middle of the war, fighters riled around on the tall mound, tossing handful after handful of tomato gunk. Away from the pile, most were slipping through a foreign tomato liquid while dodging the fast pitches from the center and the grenades from the parking garage.

The event offered a unique opportunity to donate to an honorable cause as well as hurl an overly ripe piece of fruit at a passerby of choice.

“Having it legal to hit someone in the face with a tomato is the reason I came out,” Parker said.

Three welts and a hundred photographs later, I decided a shower was a good idea.

La Tomatina was a great release, a means to aid in the fight against cancer and a great excuse to get my lenses professionally cleaned.

A complaint that the fish went missing was made to the Indiana U. Police Department at 6:18 p.m. Aug. 1, IUPD Lt. Craig Munroe said. The report estimated that the fish was stolen sometime between 6 a.m. July 31 and the time of the complaint.

Officer Dan Leeuwen of the IUPD wrote in the report that there was a beer can near the fountain and that the ground around it was wet. In the fountain, he observed a pole where the fish had been attached.

“It appeared that some of the other fish had been moved and tampered with,” Munroe said. “I don’t know how difficult it is to get one off, but they usually (turn up).”

The stolen fish, with an estimated worth of $10,000, was added to the fountain in August 2009, said Sherry Rouse, curator of campus art for the IU Office of Risk Management.

The fish is the smallest of the fish that surround the Venus sculpture in the middle.

“The whole entire sculpture was preserved, and part of that renovation was to have a new fish installed,” she said. “It’s smaller because when Robert Laurent made the sculpture, he didn’t want the fish in the front to cover Venus.”
Rouse said she was heading out of town for vacation when a member of the IUPD informed her of the theft.

“Usually when the fish are stolen, they lug them around, then they get heavy and leave them,” she said. “A lot of times these things happen as pranks, but usually they happen because of some reason. And in the middle of the summer, it’s kind of unusual.”

Rouse said one fish was stolen during the 1987 NCAA championships. When former IU men’s basketball coach Bobby Knight was fired, a couple more were lost, she said.

“For one person to pick it up is very difficult,” Rouse said. “It was probably more than one person. Generally we get them back. I would be willing to say if someone turns it in, we’ll look the other way and be happy to accept it.”

Penn State fell two spots from the top Princeton Review party school ranking, but some student leaders say the rankings never had any merit in the first place.

After climbing its way up the party school rankings over the past several years, Penn State is slowly moving down the list.

The university is not thrilled with the rankings but feels no need to get hung up on the results, university spokesman Geoff Rushton said.

“How do you scientifically gauge something like this?” Rushton said. “I don’t think you do.”

But Rob Franek, author of The Princeton Review’s “The Best 373 Colleges,” said the rankings have merit because they are the results of thousands of students’ opinions and are true to what university life is like at each campus.

Some student leaders said they were not surprised by the results.

Interfraternity Council President Max Wendkos said the third place ranking was what he expected. But he said the importance of the ranking is overplayed.

He said that while he was happy Penn State greek life got a shout-out in the lists as the No. 10 Major Sorority and Frat Scene, he said he hopes the rankings reflect the quality of the Greek community rather than just the social aspect.

But in the end, he said the survey holds no real merit.

“Thank you random anonymous survey takers for considering the Penn State fraternity and sorority community to be a vital part of your experience at this school,” Wendkos (senior-marketing and psychology) said.

For Rushton, the rankings not only hold no real legitimacy — they also have zero purpose.

The ranking is not representative of all students, he said, as many students drink responsibly.

“It’s kind of insulting to our students, who are very bright, hard-working and dedicated to their studies,” he said.

Franek said there is often criticism from administrations over the rankings — especially from those schools that are on the Party School list.

It is not the intention of the rankings to give a school a certain image, Franek said. Rather, the lists are compiled to provide the most information possible to college-bound students.

University Park Undergraduate Association President Christian Ragland said last year’s No. 1 ranking was one of the catalysts for the university and administration to push for more safety initiatives.

And a No. 3 ranking is only going to make them work harder to achieve a safer campus, he said.

“Regardless of the outcome, my goal is still going to be student safety,” Ragland (senior-political science) said.

The Princeton Review releases 62 different Top 20 lists — and this year, Penn State made an appearance on 13 of the lists.

University of Georgia and Ohio University took the first two slots on the top 20 party schools list.

The party school ranking is determined by the students’ answers to questions about students’ consumption of beer, hard liquor and drugs, hours students spend studying outside of the classroom and the popularity of fraternities and sororities, Franek said.

The average number of students per campus who complete the survey — which can be completed once a year at survey.review.com — was 325, Franek said. 122,000 college students took the survey nationwide, he said. The 80-question survey has students fill out questions on four different categories: themselves, academics and administration, student life and other students.

Penn State received some No. 2 nods for Best Career Services, Financial Aid Not So Great, Jock Schools and Lots of Beer.

The university also was ranked in the top twenty for several other categories: No. 4 for best athletic facilities, No. 6 for Best College Newspaper, No. 6 for Everyone Plays Intramural Sports, No. 10 for Major Sorority and Frat Scene, No. 12 for Lots of Hard Liquor, No. 17 for Happiest Students and No. 20 for Students Study the Least.

Knocked down by U. Georgia and Ohio U., the university now sits third on the list.

But Penn State remained No. 1 in Students Pack the Stadium. And though the university wasn’t number one in partying, it got several No. 2 nods for Best Career Services, Financial Aid Not So Great, Jock Schools, Lots of Beer.

The university also made an appearance on several other lists: No. 4 for best athletic facilities, No. 6 for Best College Newspaper, No. 6 for Everyone Plays Intramural Sports, No. 10 for Major Sorority and Frat Scene, No. 12 for Lots of Hard Liquor, No. 17 for Happiest Students and No. 20 for Students Study the Least.

Penn State students will find out today if the university is still the reigning No. 1 party school in the nation or if it has fallen a few spots.

Last year, the Princeton Review ranked the university as the No. 1 party school in the nation — a title many students were proud to hold and the administration downplayed.

But some student leaders are saying there is no way that Penn State will top the charts again.

Interfraternity Council President Max Wendkos said he is convinced that Penn State has dropped some spots. But whatever the ranking is, students will not have as big of a reaction as last year.

“There are enough students that learned that ranking was more of a curse than a gift,” Wendkos (senior-marketing and psychology) said.

Other student leaders said some students will react strongly if Penn State loses its crown.

University Park Undergraduate Association President Christian Ragland said the university is in a “transition” process.

Several incidents, like Joe Dado’s death, increased reports of sexual assault and an increased alcohol-related incidents on State Patty’s Day may have led students to come to the realization that the partying image needs to change.

Dado, a then-18-year-old freshman from Latrobe, Pa., was found dead in a stairwell on September 21, more than a day after he was reported missing after drinking at an on-campus fraternity.

Ragland (senior-political science) said he thinks these incidents may have changed students’ acceptance of the partying image.

Freshmen and sophomores will probably be the most disappointed if Penn State doesn’t make the No. 1 slot, Ragland said. But he thinks older students realize the importance of increasing safety on campus.

The administration thinks said students and media put “way too much emphasis” on the rankings, university spokesperson Annmarie Mountz said. She said it doesn’t matter whether the review ranks Penn State in a positive light or not — they are just unscientific polls of students.

“They’re not scientific rankings,” Mountz said. “They have no merit.”

But some students felt the rankings had merit — Facebook groups and T-shirts appeared shortly after the rankings were announced, boasting of the No. 1 party school status.

Last year, Penn State garnered several other top three rankings: No. 1 in “Lots of Beer” and “Students Pack the Stadium,” No. 2 in “Students Dissatisfied with Financial Aid” and No. 3 in “Best Athletic Facilities,” “Major Frat and Sorority Scene” and “Jock Schools.”

Surveys — which were completed by college students and then analyzed by the Princeton Review — also ranked the university as No. 6 in “Best College Newspapers,” “Best Career Services” and “Everyone Plays Intercollegiate Sports.”

When Penn State graduates Kylie Nellis and Tera Zeishauser drive on the highway in their current vehicle, they get plenty of honks, cheers and photo requests.

That’s because Nellis and Zeishauser are Oscar Mayer Hotdoggers. As hotdoggers, they’re touring the country in the Wienermobile for a year, handing out stickers, coupons and hot dog whistles.

This year, three Penn State graduates were selected out of more than 1,000 applicants for the job.

But they’re not the first.

Penn State graduate Mary Kate DeCoursey, Class of 2009, said the year she spent cruising through 28 states in the Wienermobile was one of the best experiences in her life.

All three women said there’s nothing better than making a person’s day simply by showing up in the Wienermobile.

“The really cool things is that the Wienermobile is so well known that people get really excited when they see it,” DeCoursey said.

Nellis said following DeCoursey’s adventures in the Wienermobile sparked her interest in applying. But she said she never expected to be chosen out of so many applicants.

“I was really surprised and excited,” Nellis said. “I knew I had to take the job, that’s for sure.”

DeCoursey said she, too, was surprised to find herself hotdogging after graduation.

Not sure what to do after graduation, DeCoursey attended an Oscar Mayer information session at a professor’s suggestion.

University spokeswoman Jill Shockey said the university is proud of students who represent the university well.

“Having the unique experience of being ‘hotdoggers’ is not just a great resume-building opportunity; it also sounds like a one-of-a-kind adventure,” she said.

DeCoursey spent six months driving through the Northwest — where she “pretty much fell in love with the West Coast” — and then six months driving in her home region of the Northeast.

After graduating from “hot dog high” — where she learned how to drive the vehicle and some Oscar Mayer history — in June, Nellis began her own hotdogging experience. Currently, she is traveling the Southeast in the Wienermobile. Around Christmas time, she will be relocated to a new region.

The Wienermobile and its hotdoggers spend about four to seven days in a location, Nellis said — and everywhere they go people get excited.

Surprisingly, driving the 27-foot dog around isn’t too difficult. Zeishauser said driving the Wienermobile is very similar to driving a large van or SUV. But her favorite part of the experience isn’t the car — it’s the destinations.

“We get to see tons of places we normally wouldn’t get to see,” she said. “That’s been one of my favorite part of the job so far.”

This week, Nellis is hotdogging in northeastern Tennessee and Zeishauser just rolled into St. Louis.

No matter where Nellis goes, she said she always runs into Penn State alumni.

DeCoursey said her favorite places to stop is where the military bases are. Often times, families would pose for a photo with the iconic car, saying they wanted to send it to a family member who was overseas, which DeCoursey said was touching.

She said there were plenty of emotional moments during the trip.

Once, while DeCoursey was eating dinner at a family member’s house in New Jersey, a passerby spotted the Wienermobile parked in the driveway. It was a woman whose son had recently passed away from multiple sclerosis. Her son’s doctor was a descendant of Oscar Mayer, a tidbit the son loved to hear about. The woman had stopped to say hi to the Wienermobile, DeCoursey said.

“It was really cool for her to get emotional and know her son was saying hi through the Wienermobile,” DeCoursey said.

Niche? Cult? More like edging on mainstream, comedic XXX renditions of celebrated television shows and films – and apparently, current events – are joining the ranks of other fetish pornography while claiming widespread appeal.

Hailing from Los Angeles, the mecca of porn production, companies such as New Sensations and Hustler are at the forefront of this new approach to adult films, notable not only for its often high quality, but also lofty artistic endeavors. Digital Playground and North Carolina-based Adam & Eve’s “Pirates,” released in 2005, became widely popular because of its unusually high production value, containing over 300 special effects shots and an original musical score. With a budget of over one million dollars, the film has won a bevy of AVN Awards, aka the Oscars of porn.

Expanding from James Gunn’s branch of non-nudity PG Porn – “for people who like everything about porn … except the sex” – these adult parodies are rooted in two camps: Those, like “Pirates,” which riff liberally off of the original work’s main premise, and those that are exceedingly faithful to its plot, style and tone. New Sensations’ “The Big Lebowski: A XXX Parody” was lauded for maintaining an aesthetic surprisingly similar to that of the original, with an attention to detail prototypical of a new brand of “art porn.”

Lee Roy Myers’ film is one that values quality acting among other production elements, and features a Peter – ho-ho – O’Tool, whose Walter is eerily identical to John Goodman’s. Admittedly, there are a host of unnecessary puns – much of which give punch with diminishing returns – that depict the senior Mr. Lebowski’s main handicap as erectile dysfunction, and insert the terms “cock,” “johnson” and a variety of other expressions that imply that The Dude has one big Lebowski. (And it’s true: He really does.)

Aside from the gape-factor that such descriptions are prone to elicit, why merge parody with porn at all? As Myers writes in an email, “It is rare to find many (adult films) that have as much entertainment value as they do masturbation value. My philosophy is that a movie can do both if it is done right. I’d like my movies to entertain and turn on an audience at the same time.”

Axel Braun, director of the award-winning “Batman XXX,” holds a similar view: “With the porn parodies we are selling the fantasy of seeing our favorite TV characters come to life and interact in sexual situations. Suddenly porn is not only a masturbatory tool anymore, but an excuse to have fun.”

But who the hell is watching this stuff? And of those that watch, does anyone take the material seriously? Porn parodies are part of a medium that insists on “evolving with the times,” says Myers. “Piracy via illegal downloading and tube sites are killing off a good chunk of Adult businesses … (Porn parody) opens up the Adult market to demographics of people that porn isn’t typically aimed at; women, couples, first time or seldom buyers, and people like college students who are looking for a more sexual style of comedy.”

With plummeting DVD sales, porn parodies may very well be the saving grace of the adult film industry, providing customers more entertainment bang for their buck. “The Adult industry needed to give consumers a reason to go and buy product instead of downloading free content on the Internet,” says Axel Braun. “(They’re) literally keeping the industry alive.”

While the average porn film from a top studio may sell about 2,000 DVDs in its first month, a quality parody can sell up to 10,000 in the same amount of time. Braun’s “Batman XXX” sold 250,000 DVDs in only its first three weeks, earning the title of the most financially successful porn parody ever made.

The adult film business and the very material it chooses to spoof – look for New Sensations’ June release of “The Golden Girls: A XXX MILF Parody” – are reflective of an industry that is both knowingly sardonic and in tune with its irony-loving, hard-to-impress audience. It’s not as limited in its scope as other porn phenomenons, such as Japan’s fascination with elder porn and yaoi, guy-on-guy romance marketed for girls. Instead, it appeals to a larger and more varied demographic that apparently can’t get enough of watching its favorite films revisited O-ver and O-ver again, at least in the bedroom.

Instead of feeling a sense of euphoria, she felt fear set in as she finished i-dosing for the first time.

“It wasn’t really a fun experience,” Padilla said. “It didn’t make me high, it scared me more than anything.”

By listening to two toned sounds, also called binaural beats, i-dosing claims to allow people to get high by pressing play. The two toned sounds often consist of a series of beep like noises that change pitch and continue for different periods of time.

The effects of listening to two toned sounds was discovered back in 1839 by physicist Heinrich William Dove, according to CBS News. I-dosing first caught national attention earlier this year when a group of Oklahoma high school students were caught listening to an i-dose from an iPod in school.

Websites like I-doser.com sell albums and downloads of different i-doses, Padilla said.

Padilla first i-dosed using a CD purchased from the website. I-doser.com offers buyers different versions of i doses that supposedly simulate different drugs such as bestsellers Marijuana and LSD. The harder drug labeled i-doses cost more and claim to simulate more of an effect.

I-doses are often accompanied with similar instructions that ask users to lay down in a dark room while listening to the dose through headphones.

“It wasn’t really much fun,” Padilla said. “You’re a little dizzy afterward, it feels like one of those optical illusion videos on YouTube.”

Some clips on YouTube claim to be actual segments of i-doses. The last ten minutes of a dose called Gate of Hades was available for free for anyone to use, but was removed from the site sometime last week.

User reactions have also become viral over the Internet via YouTube. However, varying user reactions have caused people to question the actual effects of i-dosing.

“I honestly don’t know if I got anything out of it,” said an anonymous University student. “I just felt groggy after laying in bed and listening to it for 30 minutes. I’d say it’s more of a placebo effect.”

Although more research is needed to figure out whether or not an iPod can replace a marijuana smoker’s bong, some people are trying i-doses out of simple curiosity.

“Me and two of my friends didn’t think it would really work, so we thought we would give it a go,” the anonymous student said. “The noise was kind of annoying at first, but after that it was almost soothing.”

Some parents fear that i-dosing may become a new gateway drug and will cause teens and young adults to try non-digital, more harmful drugs.

Websites like Binaural Beats Online, claim that binaural beats are safe for most people to listen to, with the exception of epileptics, expectant mothers and children who are more at risk. The website also claims that i-dosing can provide for better sleep, improved mental processing, better relaxation and pain relief.

“I think i-dosing is more of an excuse for people who don’t use drugs, to essentially try them without any negative side effects,” the student said.

I-dosing is starting to become even more common with iPod and iPhone applications like I-doser Premium. The application is another product of I-doser.com and offers 40 different binaural sequences for $5 on the iTunes Store.

In the event that I-dosing becomes illegal, law enforcers may find it even more difficult to find drugs disguised by iPods and computers.

Normally, students are either cited in municipal court or receive a student conduct referral when caught using drugs or alcohol illegally.

“I don’t even know how you would begin to enforce something like that,” said University Police Chief Dave Weekley. “There would have to be several stipulations made before any enforcement could happen.”

“It’s joy on wheels basically,” Clyde said. “Dreams really do come true.”

Both creators said they enjoyed watching BattleBots as children, and both dreamed of making a machine of their own.

In BattleBots, machines and robots battled each other in a fighting ring.

Homer said it was frustrating to watch the machines get torn apart and wished for something useful to be done with them instead, like putting a couch on top and riding around with friends.

“Growing up, I’ve always been obsessed with robots,” Clyde said.

Homer and Clyde met in a ward south of campus and fortunate circumstances provided the means for the couch to be created.

The simple loveseat has a joystick remote for steering and padded seats for a comfortable ride.

“It was really fun, really funny and really comfortable,” said Christina Pace, a lucky student given a ride on the couch.

Others have tried to make a moving couch or lazy boy, but they were all gas powered and loud, Homer said.

This invention is quiet and battery powered, perfect for a leisurely ride around Provo. Sidewalks and curbs aren’t a problem, thanks to the wheelchair base made to handle various city surfaces.

The base of a wheelchair is the power behind the couch, but first it had to be fixed.

Homer said the mechanical wheelchair base originally belonged to a girl in his ward when it stopped working. Her insurance covered the costs and she received another wheelchair, brand new. She gave the old base to a friend, who then gave it to Homer. Homer then met up with Clyde who was proficient in electrical engineering, to get the base working.

“It took three months to get it working,” Homer said.

Finally, Homer had a working, powered device to hold and steer a couch.

“Once it was fixed we needed a couch,” Clyde said.

BYU off-campus housing doesn’t allow their couches to be fastened to wheelchair bases, but DI has a wide variety of sofas at a reasonable price.

The pair went to Deseret Industries, lifted every couch and bought the lightest one, Homer said

Once drivable, the couch was quiet for residential neighborhoods and travels relatively slow which means it’s safe.

“The whole ward thinks it’s theirs, so everyone just cruises around on it,” Homer said.

This was only after they welded a strong frame which attached the couch to the base.

Some BYU students and professors said they have seen the couch driving along the sidewalks off of campus.

Paradegoers at the Freedom Festival Parade in Provo on July 4 noticed the couch trying to enter the parade route.

However, the parade marched on without the couch.

“We got through on the pre-parade,” Clyde said.

However,  once the real floats came, parade officials kicked the couch out.

Still, Clyde said he enjoys driving around Provo catching the reactions from passing people.

“It’s just an explosion of joy on their faces,” Clyde said.

There has been a rumor that the couch is banned from campus. This rumor is confirmed.

Homer and Clyde said they’ve been up to campus several times, especially during football season when the grounds were empty.

The banning from BYU grounds came from a campus police officer who pulled them over near J-Dawgs, took down their information and issued them warnings.

“We usually see smiles and laughter but with this guy, there were no smiles to be seen,” Clyde said.

The couch on wheels can still be seen off-campus, but not on Y Lots because they are also part of BYU grounds.

The couch has received national media coverage and has been seen on ABC, KSL, CNN and Sports Illustrated.

The parties already exist for make-up, sex toys and Tupperware. But now, there is a buying party for men: Man Cave Worldwide “meatings.”

The company, started by a 2010 U.Minnesota graduate, offers men what women have had for years. With a Man Cave adviser, men can host their friends for a barbecue, drink free beer, learn how to grill and sell products.

“Guys have been needing this for a long time,” said Mike Krueger, who hosted a “meating” Thursday at his home in Eden Prairie.

The market demand is evident in the figures. Man Cave founder and University entrepreneurship graduate Nick Beste expects the company to net $2 million in revenue this year.

A small portion of that came from Krueger’s party, where almost 50 of his friends joined him to grill. In total, they spent more than $1,000 on Man Cave grilling utensils and food. The company offers both its advising and sales services, as well as products, including 33 flavors of brats – beer, apple and fajita among them.

Krueger, 52, was charged nothing for the food and beer at his party, and got 20 percent, or $200, in free Man Cave products for hosting.

“Meating” attendee Alan Ploetz, a relative of Krueger’s neighbor, suggested broadening the product selection to include tools and cigars.

Friends from the gym, his office and the neighborhood crowded Krueger’s backyard pool area for the testosterone-fueled gathering Thursday.

Away from their families, the men relaxed and shared aging health problems and dirty jokes.

“It’s got a good buzz, and I hope to get one too,” Ploetz said of the meating.

Dennis Kronberg, a friend from the gym, said the concept was “brilliant.”

Illustrating the grand array of ages at the party, 41-year-old Kronberg brought along his friend Jake Thompson, a 2010 College of Biological Sciences graduate of the University.

“Men are men, no matter what age,” said Kronberg, who has his own man cave at home — the “Garage Mahal.”

Man Cave adviser Jim Harvey, who makes commission from purchases at the gatherings, was both salesman and grilling expert at Krueger’s home.

Harvey has been with the company for three months and joined because it was a natural fit – he and his wife grill 90 percent of the time anyway.

“People pay me to drink beer and eat brats and mingle — how much better can it get?” Harvey said.

The idea for the company came to Beste after a grilling family get-together, he said. An uncle was demonstrating grilling techniques, and he wanted a way to combine this with making a profit.

“It just kind of clicked,” Beste said. “It’s kind of like Pampered Chef … nobody does that for guys. Maybe we should.”

Beste started the company with long-time entrepreneur partner Kevin Carlow. The two had numerous ventures under their belts before Man Cave, including the “U Guide,” a campus guide distributed to first-year students at the University and nine other colleges.

Profits from advertisements in these publications helped fund Man Cave, Beste said.

Samantha White, a consultant with Pure Romance — a company with a similar model to Man Cave but for sex toys — said the concept makes sense.

“We’re women, and we target products for women,” she said. “They’re men, and they target products men would enjoy.”

Man Cave currently holds contracts with 820 advisers like Harvey in 47 states, Beste said.

The company’s exponential growth is clear when comparing last July’s revenue to this month’s. While it made $5,000 in July 2009, Beste said, Man Cave is on track to make $150,000 by the end of this month.

The success of Man Cave may be attributed to the shifting work force roles, White said.

“It’s been men’s world out there,” she said. Now that the workforce is more gender equal, these home parties are not just for women.

Krueger, whose son is a member of a University fraternity, said he plans to incorporate Man Cave products into tailgating.

The company’s major clientele is 30- to 50-year-old men with families, Beste said, and fraternities have not yet been customers.

“I’d be really interested to see what would happen” when incorporating greek life, he said.

Despite the company’s name, women have also made up a portion of its workforce. An estimated 7 percent of the 820 advisers are women, who can often sell better than men, Beste said.

Northeast Minneapolis based-Man Cave Worldwide’s headquarters employs 10 staff, many of whom are recent University graduates like Beste, he said.

“A lot of guys have seen their wives go to these home parties,” Beste said. “Guys also, I think, are looking for a reason to get away from their wife and kids for a little bit.

“This is a reason for them to say, ‘Honey, I can’t come home tonight — I’ve got to go to a meating.’”

Services, called “gigs” on the site, range from painting watercolor pictures from supplied photographs to people singing “Happy Birthday” to someone over the phone in Marilyn Monroe’s voice.

Fiverr is just one site that offers low priced opportunities for services. Others include TenBux.com, virtually the same with $10 gigs added to the mix, and ClickFive.net, which focuses on $5 Internet marketing through Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Based on her first impression, Bowling Green State U. Popular Culture professor Montana Miller said that the site’s diverse advertisements could create new consumer needs overnight just by giving people ideas they had never thought of.

Miller said the low price creates possibilities for people to come up with small ideas that can eventually turn into “big moneymakers” if they catch on.

“[The site] gives an individual the tools to come up with an idea and implement it instantly,” Miller said.

University senior Nick Rush is implementing two of his ideas on Fiverr, allowing opportunities for people to get their names out around campus.

Rush, who works for the University’s recording services at the College of Musical Arts with hopes to become a recording engineer, currently offers two gigs that aid in giving people business exposure.

Rush’s first gig ties directly into his line of work, He will review people’s music on “multiple sound systems” in order to give a “detailed, honest opinion” of aspiring musical artists.

“I thought [about] where I was a lot of the time and what I like to do,” Rush said. “I enjoy recording music and I have access to the studio.”

Rush mentioned he first heard about the website from his boss, who in turn has performed professional voice-overs as a gig.

Rush’s second gig allows customers to e-mail him fliers, and he will print three of them out and post them in different locations around the campus.

Rush believes the gig is convenient for his own work and school schedule.

“I’m always on the BGSU campus, so it would be easy to print up the fliers and post them up while I’m walking to work,” Rush said. “It’s really just things that I do that are not going to take a whole lot of time.”

Both Rush and his boss have received offers from sellers, though Rush decided to delay his service until the fall semester begins.

“Being the nice person that I am, I tell [buyers] that college is out right now,” Rush said. “There’s not nearly as many people on campus to see [the fliers].”

Aside from business, Rush said that he simply enjoys looking at the gigs listed on the site.

“There’s a lot of weird stuff on [Fiverr],” Rush said. “It’s just fun to go on and see what people do for five bucks and how you can benefit from that.”

Rush does not believe the site to be currently popular with University students, but said he would not be surprised to see a spike in its appeal.

“It’s still an underground site, really,” Rush said. “I remember Twitter when it wasn’t anything at all … so I’m sure with the right exposure Fiverr and even TenBux will really explode because of the unique stuff you can get off of there.”

Miller also expressed optimism for the site’s future and said the site will appeal to people who enjoy self-employment.

“What’s beautiful about it is you are your own boss,” Miller said. “You may still be making minimum wage, but you are in charge.”

This idea of freedom certainly appeals to Rush.

“If you like drawing, offer to draw for someone,” Rush said. “There’s nothing better than getting paid for doing something you want to do anyway.”

In recent years, schools like Eckerd College, Stephens College and MIT have established living spaces where students can room with their pets.

Although schools allowing pets are beginning to flourish, U. North Florida has remained steadfast in its pet policies.

Kristin Smith, coordinator of student life at UNF, said the school has never considered or discussed the idea of pet-friendly residence halls. Smith said there are ahandful of concerns with adopting pet-friendly policies.

“Residence halls are limited in  space, which could create stress on the pet,” Smith said. “There is also the thought of a pet getting loose and not being able to locate it.”

According to UNF pet policy, “With the consent of your roommate(s), the only pet you may
have in your room is a non-aggressive fish. The fish tank may not exceed 10 gallons.”

Failure to comply with student policy can result in a fine and the immediate removal of any petfound living in a dorm.

“Many concerns are centered on health and safety issues such as allergies, room cleaning, and waste disposal/sanitation issues,” Smith said. “There is also the concern of noise ­— as not all pets are passive in personality — and that could become disruptiveto the overall community.”

UNF and Jacksonville U. have similar pet policies. According to JU’s website, “All pets, other than service animals and harmless varieties of fish stored in tanks of 15 gallons or less, are prohibited in and around residential facilities.”

Students who fail to comply with JU’s pet policies may be removed from the residence.

Even though UNF and JU are standing behind their pet policies, colleges throughout the country are beginning to jump on the pet-friendly bandwagon. Schools that aren’t yet may not be far behind.  With the creation of Facebook groups like “Student’s for Pet-Friendly Dorms!” students are showing more support for the movement.

Critics of pet friendly dorms are concerned with the animals’ welfare.

Although living with pets may provide soothing stress relief it can also cause stress for the pet, said director of development at the Jacksonville Humane Society, Pamela Javins.

“When you have a pet in college it’s all about being able to get back and forth from classes and social events to care for an animal,” Javins said.

Students need to think about the financial responsibilities of raising a pet as well, Javins said.

No one should plan to bring a pet into their home without taking into consideration their ability to provide that animal with regular vet care, she said.

“There is also the cost of food,” Javins said. “Cheap food often has a great deal of filler that has no nutritional value”

Stetson University recently joined the pet-friendly movement by adding 36 pet-friendly dorm rooms to its campus. Megan Young, a residential life coordinator at Stetson University, served as the committee chairwoman for Stetson’s new pet-friendly policies.

The idea for the new dorms came from Stetson’s President Wendy Libby, who started a similar pet-friendly program when she was president at Stephens College.

“Our students never imagined it was a possibility for them to live with their pets on campus,” Young said. “Libby was the one who showed interest in the pet halls.”

“Once Libby verbalized it, students jumped on board,” she said.

Young believes there are many advantages to living with a pet in college. She said it gives students a sense of community to live with other students who are also pet owners.

“After a bad day, your pet will be there,” Young said. “Pets are unconditional love and teach students a larger sense of responsibility.”

Even though UNF has expressed no desire to adapt dorms for pet lovers anytime in the future, two large colleges in Florida have already made the transition into the pet-friendly world. It may be a matter of time before more schools across the state join the trend.

The Harold B. Lee Library’s parody of the popular “Old Spice Guy” commercial series posted to YouTube on Thursday went viral over the weekend and had nearly one million views at press time.

The one-minute parody, “New Spice, Study like a Scholar, Scholar, ” was created by the BYU library’s multimedia production unit.

According to a news release, within 24 hours of Thursday’s posting, the video had already received more than 150,000 views.

The parody has also gained national media attention. CBS News ran a story with Katie Couric discussing the Old Spice commercial’s popularity and the library’s parody of the commercial was mentioned.

The original Old Spice commercials show former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa, now known as “The Old Spice guy,” promoting the Old Spice product by smooth talking his way through several quick and humorous scene changes.

Stephen Jones, president of Humor U and a senior from Tallahassee, Fla., played the lead role in the parody. Based on Mustafa’s performance, the character is a scholar who utilizes the library to get good grades.

“Anything is possible, when you’re in the library,” Jones says in the video.

The stunts in the parody were Jones’ favorite part of filming the commercials, as well as riding on a library cart.

Everything viewers see in the video was filmed in the library, Jones said. The room the parody opens with was staged using painted Styrofoam walls. The marble floor in the library made it easy to pull back the carpet holding the couch.

If watched carefully, at about 19 seconds into the video, a crew member can be seen under the plant he pulled out of the opening scene.

Mike Hill, video production and unit manager, said the team didn’t want to have everything perfect. Instead, they wanted to put it together quickly and show the fun they had during production. They purposely kept the crew member in the shot for this reason.

“We wanted to leave it kind of raw,” Hill said. “We didn’t want to do any computer-generated imagery.”

Dropping the backpack in the parody was the hardest part of the process, Hill said, and took two to three hours of rehearsing.

With a crew of about 10 students, as well as friends and volunteers, the project was completed from start to finish in less than three weeks.

It wasn’t Jones’ first parody of the Old Spice commercial, according to Humor U adviser Tanner Kay. Jones wrote and performed a parody of it in the March Humor U show. That performance, according to Kay, was seen by members of the HBLL crew and gave them the idea to invite Jones to play the starring role in the video.

Hill said the team was excited to put this parody into production and spent a lot of time working and planning the project. They brainstormed several ideas of what to produce, and Old Spice won by a landslide.

“This was the most aggressive idea that we had,” Hill said. “We just let the students run with it.”

You can watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ArIj236UHs

He casually leans against the bar and raises one eyebrow, but the woman points to her engagement ring, cutting him off before he has the chance to say a word.

Recognizing defeat, the man nods and retreats to his corner of the bar, completely oblivious to the fact the ring on the woman’s finger is a fake.

Nate Dufour, a bartender at Glow Nightclub, said on busy nights he estimates one out of three women will sport fake engagement rings to keep men from hitting on them.

“I think it is the best tactic of all the other ones you could use,” Dufour said.

He said in his opinion wearing a fake engagement ring is a good way for women to drastically reduce the number of men who bother with advances.

James Reynolds, a vocal performance student at Western, said women come to the Western Associated Students Bookstore where he works looking for decoy rings to wear when they go out on the town. His question to these women is why would they decide to wear fake engagement rings if they are single.

“What if that keeps them from finding their true love or finding their soul mate that’s out there?” Reynolds said. “The good guys won’t come up to you if you are wearing a ring, and those are the ones you want to meet.”

Rachelle McGaugh, a customer at Glow Nightclub, said while she has never personally worn a fake engagement ring. She said she thinks the idea is a smart one for women to use when they go out.

“It would be a really good excuse, because I’m not trying to meet someone at a bar,” McGaugh said. “That’s not how I imagine meeting my husband.”

Other women who enjoy going out to bars said there are other reasons for wearing a decoy ring beyond avoiding “creepy” guys.

Megan Thomas, a customer at the Royal in downtown Bellingham, said she wore a fake engagement ring for a couple of weeks when she worked at a coffee stand and had a male customer who stopped by almost daily to see her.

“I think it helped,” Thomas said. “When he stopped coming by as often I stopped wearing it.”

Thomas said she thinks this particular tactic is an approach women use to turn men down that is easy and less embarrassing than other methods.

“It’s the ultimate ‘do not disturb’ sign,” Thomas said.

Mambo Italiano bartender Jill Fox said she thinks wearing a fake engagement ring works for women, and said she wore a silver band to work, until she got engaged.

“I think women mostly wear them to keep creeps away from them so they can just go out with their friends and have fun without worrying about stupid drunk guys hitting on them,”

Fox said. “Sometimes guys will hit on you anyway, but a lot of times they will look at it and respect it.”

Ashley McGowan, a communications student at Western, said she wore a fake engagement ring when she worked the midnight shift at a grocery store. She said her three-pronged, cubic zirconium ring was part of her personal uniform and helped keep men from hitting on her while she worked.

“It’s a protection aspect,” McGowan said. “We’ve been raised in a culture where we are supposed to be aware of dangers. Having a ring on your finger is like a shield that says, ‘There is a guy behind this ring.’”

McGowan said she thinks women typically decide to wear fake engagement rings in public when they have a boyfriend, just want to have fun with friends or want an easy way of showing men they are not available.

“[Men] don’t take other reasons sometimes,” McGowan said. “It is the only language they listen to.”

Nick Griffin, a student studying psychology at Western, said he supports the clever rejection tactic. Wearing a fake ring may help keep men from hitting on women but wearing a ring is not as effective if women are dressed provocatively, Griffen said.

“I guess props to them,” Griffin said. “If a woman is wearing a ring and dressing in a provocative manner, then it sends very mixed signals to men.”

McGowan said she thinks the way a woman dresses should not be used as an excuse for a man to hit on her.

“I think justifying someone’s actions based on how they are dressed is a cop-out and unacceptable,” McGowan said. “If a woman is wearing a wedding ring, then you still should not hit on her because her actions should be judged and not her clothing.”

Griffin countered and said part of someone’s actions include what they wear.

“Your perceptions of an individual are based on a collective number of things including what people do, how they act and the way they dress,” Griffin said. “There is no one thing that is going to counter someone’s perception of something.”

Thomas said she thinks the issue of clothing paired with an engagement ring comes down to the motives people have behind the outfits they choose for going out. She said women need to be honest with themselves and ask why they are at the bar and why they are wearing a fake engagement ring.

“Some people are always going to talk to you no matter what you are wearing,” Thomas said. “You can’t control other people’s actions, but you can control how you react. Ring or no ring, if you don’t want the attention, you can put a stop to it.”

Griffin said although he thinks wearing a fake engagement ring is a good idea, a ring alone will not always stop men from hitting on women, especially if the man is drunk.

“I would say the percentage of guys who don’t care or don’t notice [an engagement ring] is greater than the percentage who do care,” Griffin said.

Andrew Lauridsen, a customer at the Royal, said when he is at a bar, he does not initially think to look at a woman’s hand. Lauridsen said he thinks most men typically look at physical attributes and personality traits before they consider checking for a ring.

“Men are at a disadvantage because they do not have the hindsight of knowing if it is fake or not,” Lauridsen said. “I think any girl who is by herself at a bar is looking for some sort of attention.”

Cheryl Perks, an employee at the Western’s bookstore, said women are not the only ones who come to the bookstore and purchase fake engagement rings. Perks said men have also stopped to look for a ring resembling a wedding band to wear.

“If they have a girlfriend, they buy rings so they don’t get hit on when they go out,” Perks said.

Dufour, Glow’s bartender, said although it may not be as common for men to take part in the fake wedding ring charade, he has personal experience with the issue.

“Oh, I’ve done it,” Dufour said, as he winks and points to a wedding band on his hand. “I still do it.”

An octopus living in Germany’s Oberhausen Sea Life Centre, Paul has attained worldwide fame for his uncanny ability to predict the winners of soccer matches. Since he began his career at the Euro Cup in 2008, Paul has correctly predicted 12 out of 14 matches.

Although he is usually limited to predicting matches for German soccer enthusiasts, Paul picked Spain to beat the Netherlands earlier this week. In the clip, Paul is seen swimming toward two boxes — one decorated with the Spanish flag and the other with the Dutch flag — and sitting on one of them to indicate his pick.

Various videos on YouTube showing the process have become immensely popular, with four different clips amassing over 4 million views. Paul’s infinite wisdom has also been captured by the iPhone with a new “Ask the Octopus” application that allows users to ask Paul 50/50 questions.

The Oberhausen Sea Life Centre recently announced Paul’s retirement since he is two years old and nearing the end of a typical octopus’ life span. Paul could soon move to Madrid’s Zoo Aquarium in Spain, which is eager to acquire him as a memento of their team’s legendary triumph.

All right children, today’s topic is going to be moving. But what, you ask, is “moving”?

Well, I’m glad you asked.  Moving, according to the Oxford English Dictionary of Stuff I Just Made Up, is the act of transferring one’s person and belongings from one domicile to a new place of residence.

But what motivation is there to perform such an irritating and difficult endeavor?  Well, barring angry creditors and arrest warrants, the biggest reason to move is because your house is too small to hold all of your junk.

Imagine that you had a toilet, and instead of flushing it, you just carefully transferred everything into a new larger toilet every time you ran out of space.  Except that, of course, not everything is going to survive the move, so you’ll probably have to add some new crap to the new toilet and what-do-you-know, it looks like we’re running out of space again. This is the essence of moving. Except instead of a shovel, you have to rent a truck. Also, you have to carefully package each individual piece of crap so that it does not become damaged on the way over.

That sounds like fun! I’m sure you’re saying, “how do I go about moving?”

Well, the first rule of moving is to have a bunch of crap in your old house. I don’t just mean things that you use, like furniture or LEGO pirate ship collections.  No, I mean absolutely useless stuff, like boxes of every single report card you got in grade school and broken appliances that you keep around just in case they suddenly start working again.

So how do I go about collecting enough useless crap to justify a move?  Well, it’s all about the mentality.  Let’s say you’re driving down the street, when you see a large pile of broken gardening tools.  What would you do?

A) Continue driving.

B) Take the tools because I have an immediate need for gardening tools, such as working on a farm, or murdering foolish sex-crazed teenagers during romantic log-cabin weekend getaways.

C) Take the tools because while I have no use for broken gardening tools at the moment and in fact am violently allergic to all known gardening plants as well as dirt, I will take them with me on the chance that I may at some point in the future, possibly decades from now, find a use for it, such as a wedding present for the child that I do not currently have, but will hopefully be interested in some gardening tool-related field, such as foolish-sex-crazed-teenager-murderer.

If you answered A or B, you are most likely not ready to move any time soon (unless the remains of the log-cabin party have been discovered, in which case you should probably back up the old hockey mask and pickaxe and start ominously shambling towards a new B-movie domicile, such as an ancient cursed burial ground or outer space).

If, you, like me, answered C, then you are well on your way to moving preparedness. It’s time to throw away that old house like a used Taco Cabana napkin and start over fresh. This brings us to our next section on moving: actually moving.
Once you have accumulated sufficient crap levels throughout your house, it’s time to start packing. Packing is the fine art of playing Doom II for seven hours a day until the night before you are evicted, and then hastily throwing every possession into large cardboard boxes in random order.

Now that we’re packed up and moved out, the next step in order is to find a place to move into.  There are lots of ways to find a new place to live, such as purchasing it or massacring the previous inhabitants.  When looking for a new home, there are a couple things to look for.  Are there four walls?  Does it have a roof?  Is it located on a haunted ancient burial ground?  Are the neighbors all single attractive bikini-clad 20-somethings?  More importantly, are they female?

As you can see, most of this is about location. This is why we packed stuff in boxes.  Just find a nice spot, empty a box and you’re all set.

Icing is the new game widely reported to have been started earlier this summer by members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at the College of Charleston.

TIME Magazine, The New York Times, LA Times Daily, The Washington Post, The Boston Herald and The New York Post are a few of the larger media outlets which have already written stories about the phenomenon that is sweeping the country like an ice storm.

Brosicingbros.com is a website which gives the rules of the game, pictures of the best ices and celebrity ices, and important advice on subjects such as “bro attire” and “how to deal with bitching bros.”

The game goes like this- one must present to their “bro” a Smirnoff Ice (remember, those are the overly-sugary vodka drinks with which most of us tested out the waters of drinking).

The Ice can be presented in any fashion: through hiding it, disguising it or simply handing it off, though clever and creative deliveries seem to be the most funpart of the game. Once the receiver as the Ice, they must mmediately get down on one knee and chug the ottle.

According to brosicingbros.com there are only two simple rules: you cannot refuse an Ice and you can Ice block if you have one on you to give back to the presenter.

Don’t let the overuse of the term “bro” fool you. Females have proven be amazing ice-ers too.

Adrian Lesperance, Auburn senior, committed her first icing this past week.

“I iced my friends neighbors. We put six around their house with messages on them,” said Lesperance. “I am planning to have one on me when the neighbors return this afternoon so I can block my icing,” Lesperance said.

Brandon Sapp, bartender at 17/16, just heard about the game.

”It sounds like fun! I’d like to start carrying it (at 17/16) just to do that,” said Sapp.

Haley Zoeller, Auburn senior is also currently involved in an icing war.

“I believe it’s a boys vs. girls icing in our situation,” Zoeller said. “My boyfriend found one in our cabinet but didn’t chug it, so he’s been shunned,” said Zoeller.

Caroline Trotter, Clemson senior, was lucky enough to have met the originator when visiting College of Charleston.

“I even have friends who have been iced at work,” Trotter said

Ryan Romano, senior at West Virginia plans on starting the craze at his school.

“I’ve got about seven friends who are gonna fall in love with it and then it’s not gonna be good for me,” Romano said.

Brent Jenkins, Auburn senior, has devised his own idea targeting the female population.

“I think bros icing bros is kind of sexist,” Jenkins said. “We should have something for girls that they don’t like to drink, like Diesel (original Budweiser, also called Bud Heavy),” Jenkins said.

Jenkins thought up the name chicks dieseling chicks for his idea of the female counterpart game. Who knows, maybe the next revolution will come from right here at Auburn.

Reel Video has more than 81,000 individual video titles, ranging from the familiar to the fantastic and more than 100,000 copies total, but its one-of-a-kind collection could be closed down because the store’s parent corporation, Movie Gallery Inc., has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The store was founded in 1997, but was bought about a year later by Hollywood Video, a subsidiary of Movie Gallery Inc.

Store employees and community members are launching efforts to save the store through fundraising and other initiatives, including a website campaign asking for help. The store has yet to be told when it will close.

Movie Gallery, Inc. filed for bankruptcy in February and initially said it would close 760 of its stores nationwide, but now it may be closing most if not all of its more than 2,000 stores in the United States. Movie Gallery, Inc. could not be reached for comment.

According to employees, the store has remained profitable despite the parent company’s bankruptcy.

“In November we were told (by Movie Gallery) ‘You guys are our most profitable store,’” said employee Stephanie Pasvankias.

‘Still Worth the Shelf Space’

In addition to employee fundraising, The East Bay Media Center has stepped in to sponsor the store and is accepting donations on its behalf. Center officials say it is important that the store stays in business.

“What we’d like to do is keep Reel in the community and help it expand its services,” said Paul Blake, the center’s president. “It’s important for the community to support this because of Berkeley’s strong cinema culture.”

Blake added that the store appeals to customers both because of its large film collection and because of the quality of its employees.

“People don’t go there, initially, for just mainstream movies,” he said. “They go there for the depth of both the employees and the (film) catalogue.”

Pasvankias said the store’s employees and the way it categorizes films make it unique.

“The retention for employees here is amazing and it’s not because we’re paid well,” she said. “We absolutely love movies.”

The store has dozens of film categories, including more typical genres such as drama, comedy and documentary, but it is known for its more offbeat categories such as “Bromance,” “Blaxploitation” and “Your Mom.”

“At Reel, they live with this idea that a lot of titles are looked at on a rare occasion, but they’re still worth the shelf space,” said Steve Seid, video curator for the Pacific Film Archive. “That to me is really laudable because the business model goes kind of counter to that idea.”

Seid added that if the store closes, it could signal the downfall of other, similar stores.

As an Industry Struggles, Hopes Remain

Many stores in Berkeley and across the nation have been struggling for business because of the success of online movie renting companies such as Netflix.

In Berkeley, Five Star Video has seen tougher times in recent years, according to manager Dave Fuller.

“Netflix is our steepest competition at this point,” he said.

But Reel employees have emphasized that their store has been economically healthy and profitable in recent years.

“This place was mismanaged and forgotten about through Hollywood Video,” said Pasvankias. “It’s funny to look at a privately owned video store as a community resource, but we really do see it that way and we think we can further that.”

Pasvankias said employees want the store to become a non-profit organization to expand its services to the community.

“We have folders upon folders of ideas and proposals to be able to transition into a larger community resource,” she said. “The best case scenario, for me, would be to see the community pull together and save this place.”

A Facebook event created by Calcaterra is pushing for the veteran actor to come to an MU graduation ceremony in 2011. Calcaterra said he wants to make the point that students should be able to choose their commencement speakers.

“It was a test to see how popular this would be,” Calcaterra said.

Calcaterra said Today show host Ann Curry botching the name of a college at a commencement ceremony inspired the event.

“Students should have a choice,” Calcaterra said. “It doesn’t have to be Christopher Walken. They’ve spent four years working, and it is their celebration. They should have a choice. I wanted to see if we could make that to happen.”

MU spokesman Christian Basi said students would need to talk to the appropriate dean for the particular college or school ceremony they were looking at.

“If the students were interested in getting a speaker for a commencement ceremony, they would talk to the administration for an individual school or college,” Basi said.

Basi said each selection process for every school and college is different.

“The school of nursing has students who give a small speech,” Basi said.

Other colleges and schools select keynote speakers or have a group of students who choose the guest, Basi said.

“The overall ceremony for the entire campus is the honors convocation in spring,” Basi said. “The speakers at that ceremony are honorary degree recipients who are nominated to a faculty committee and recommended to the chancellor.”

Basi said the candidate is then approved by the UM system Board of Curators.

Kathleen Miller, secretary to the Board of Curators, said other college and school guest speakers do not require board approval.

Calcaterra said he is focusing on the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources’ graduation ceremony because it is the school he attends.

“I thought (Walken) was a fairly neutral candidate,” Calcaterra said. “He’s the first person that came to mind, and he’s popular with our generation.”

Calcaterra said he wants to see how big the group gets. The group has 270 members as of July 6.

“I haven’t heard a whole lot of feedback,” Calcaterra said. “On Facebook it has been mostly positive. My friends thought it was farfetched.”

If the group size becomes significant, Calcaterra said he would take action by starting an online petition and getting people to sign it. Afterward, he would then present it to the administration. He said he would not be surprised if the petition fell through.

“I wouldn’t cause a huge uproar,” Calcaterra said. “The administration has brushed off ideas before. I wouldn’t be too angry.”

Calcaterra said he wants to get more people to join the event.

“If we can get (Walken) to come, that would be pretty cool,” Calcaterra said.

Sidney Pierce receives that type of mail, too, but he’s also forwarded e-mails with supposed sea monster snapshots, and has even gotten occasional samples of ocean-dwelling creatures.

Pierce, a U. South Florida biology professor, has investigated sea monsters as a “sort of” hobby for 15 years.

Recently, he was quoted by the blog Gawker about photographs of a possible new Massachusetts beach monster — which he guessed was “from his teeth . . . a small dog.”

However, Pierce said he doesn’t study pictures or myths like the Loch Ness Monster, and his actual research began in 1995 with the Floridian case of the St. Augustine Monster.

The carcass washed ashore nearly one century earlier in 1896 and had long been used to suggest evidence of a giant octopus.

First, he obtained the remains from the Smithsonian Institute. Then, through electron microscopic research, he found that the tissue more closely resembled a whale’s blubber.

After his group published a paper on their findings, Pierce said he started receiving requests to test various sea monster samples — from locations as diverse as Tasmania, Bermuda, Chile and Newfoundland.

“What I get is fairly bad-smelling Ziploc bags . . . that people shoot to me,” Pierce said.

Although these ocean creature remains are often initially considered as signs of potential giant octopi and squids, Pierce said that he has been able to trace every tissue sample he’s received back to one animal — the whale.

“They’ve turned out to be different species of whales, but they’ve all turned out to be really, very badly decomposed whale blubber,” Pierce said.

In 2003, the 13-ton, 41-foot Chilean Blob was discovered on Pinuno Beach — with the story receiving coverage from the New York Times and BBC News.

Pierce and his laboratory ran DNA analysis, amino acid and electron microscope tests on the sample. They concluded that the collagen matched a sperm whale rather than an invertebrate animal.

“I keep hoping they’ll turn out to be something I can’t figure out because that would be much more interesting,” Pierce said.

One of the more mysterious cases he has encountered, Pierce said, was the Nantucket Blob.

The Nantucket Shellfish Warden’s Office provided him with a  sample that also turned out to be whale, but he found himself unable to extract any information about the discovery’s origins in the Massachusetts island town.

“He sent it to me, and I was intrigued to learn more about what the circumstances about it were — and nobody would talk to me about it in Nantucket after that,” Pierce said. “Mostly, I think it was because  they  didn’t  want  tourists thinking that smelly things were washing onto the beaches of Nantucket.”

While Pierce has done forensic work on about 10 sea monster samples, he said that he more commonly receives photos of strange beachside remnants.

“I get pictures like this one from Gawker all the time. Fortunately, they didn’t send me a piece of that,” Pierce said.

Pierce said he worked with students on his Chilean Blob studies and that others seemed eager to delve into the world of ocean creatures.

“You’d be surprised at the number of potential graduate students who write to  me every year, hoping that they can get their Ph.D. working on sea monsters,” Pierce said.

Nicholas Curtis, a graduate biology student, said that assisting Pierce on his Chilean Blob laboratory research helped him train his eye for future sea monster discoveries.

“It’s difficult visually . . . it’s just sort of an amorphous mass, there’s nothing else in it,” Curtis said. “So it’s not surprising that people conclude that it could be a giant octopus.”

Curtis also helped in testing the Tasmanian West Coast Monster, Nantucket Blob and other samples as a means of comparison — not the biological surveys he expected to do in grad school.  “It was fun and different than the day-to-day grind of what  you’re normally doing, for sure,” Curtis said.

Though all the specimens he investigated with Pierce were matched to whales, Curtis said discovering new sea monsters still seems plausible.

“We know so little about the deep ocean that there’s always the possibility there’s something down there we’ve never seen before,” he said.

Enormous water-dwelling creatures like the colossal squid — which possess hooked tentacles and eyes the size of dinner plates — have been uncovered in recent years.

“You never know,” Pierce said. “It’s just stuff  (that) washes in on a beach.  I just sort of sit here  and wait for people to call and say, ‘This just washed in on the beach, and we don’t know what it is. Do you want some of it?’”

The continuous rain wasn’t enough to keep away eager combatants – some came in costume, some came in war paint. But they all had one thing in common: an intense desire to hit each other with pillows.

“Stuff like this never happened before in Omaha, but it did in bigger cities,” said event organizer John Cady. “So I decided to start it here.”

At the sound of Cady’s air horn, the mob converged and the pillows began to fly. Participants battered each other until Cady sounded his horn, ending the first round. After a short break round 2 began and battle cries were heard again as the fierce pillow fighters charged into battle.

As the brawl continued, some ended up taking it a bit too seriously, and one real fight had to be broken up. Despite this, most of the participants left the arena soaked and with huge smiles on their faces. This type of event, sometimes called a flash mob, was organized by Cady and spread through Facebook.

“We heard about the event from Facebook,” said Kegan Kegley, 18. “It was a lot of fun, but maybe a little too short, and sometimes a little rough.”

While those present were mostly teenagers and college students, fighters of all ages were involved in the scuffle.

“My sister’s boyfriend wanted to come, and it sounded fun.” said Ellie, a middle school-aged girl who came with her friends and younger brother.

Similar fights have been banned in other states – in San Francisco, it cost the city nearly $20,000 to clean feathers from clogged drains.

Thankfully this year, most players left their feather pillows at home.

When asked if there would be an Omaha pillow fight next year, Cady didn’t hesitate to answer.

“Absolutely, we’ll be doing this every year,” he said. “It’s too fun not to.”

The event drew 153 people in “Star Trek” costumes, possibly breaking the world record for largest gathering of people dressed as “Star Trek” characters, said Paul McCracken, a member of the Riverside Area Community Club’s Board of Directors.

At present, the record is 99 people in London in February. An event in Bonn, Germany, on May 1 claimed to have 507 people in “Star Trek” costumes, but that number has yet to be confirmed.

McCracken said a video of the Riverside event has to be analyzed before the record is confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records.

“It’s not something they take lightly,” he said.

Christine Miles, one of the Trekfest goers, said she has been a “Trek” fan since she was little.

“My dad was really into sci-fi,” she said. “Now I’m just a pretty big sci-fi nerd.”

The U. Iowa junior, dressed in standard red Starfleet garb, attended the costume contest as what she jokingly called, “the illegitimate daughter of Capt. Picard and Dr. Crusher” of the Next Generation series.

Many Trekfest-attendees dressed in Starfleet uniforms, but some came as Klingons, able to speak some of the Klingon language, and wearing heavy leather Klingon outfits.

“It was a pretty hot day yesterday,” said Pierre Saba, a 15-year Trekfest veteran. “[The Klingons] hung out there all day.”

Saba, whose wife, nieces, and nephews often tag along to the event, said the atmosphere has a sense of escapism and fantasy.

“I’ve got 10 days in the year I look forward to, and Trekfest is one of them,” he said. “It’s gotten bigger and bigger pretty much every time.”

Saba went to school in Cedar Rapids with Terry Farrell, who starred in “Deep Space Nine” — so he has a personal connection to the series.

“There are quite a lot of ‘Star Trek’ fans out there in the world,” Saba said. “There are some goofballs that come up with their own characters.”

The contest took place after the parade, which featured not only “Star Trek” floats and the USS Riverside, but also tractors and people riding horses.

“That’s pretty classic Iowa,” Miles said.

Trekfest also included a museum featuring a bust of William Shatner and three former “Trek” stars: Walter Koenig, BarBara Luna, and James Cawley.

However, the event doesn’t only draw Iowans. Fans from out-of-state attended as well.

Andrew Trout and fellow “Trek” fan and USS Gorkon crew member Chris Danford were two of the out-of-state fans in attendance, both from Indiana.

“A lot of people love ‘Star Trek’ discussion,” said Trout, after rubbing the sweat from his eye under his glasses.

“No crap, it’s a ‘Star Trek’ convention,” said Danford, sipping from a can of Mountain Dew.
“Be respectful,” Trout said.

Cal Poly took first place last weekend in the American Society of Civil Engineers National Concrete Canoe Competition. Cal Poly beat out 21 other teams from the U.S. and Canada. The teams were scored in four different categories: design paper, technical presentation, the design and aesthetics of the canoe and the races.

“It’s mostly intellectual,” said civil engineering graduate Steve Gursky, one of the paddlers and organizers for Cal Poly.

The competition, which was first held nationally in 1988, challenges students to design and build a canoe made out of concrete.

Cal Poly won the regional competition in April to advance to the national finals, which were held at Lopez Lake, near San Luis Obispo.

It was the first year a host school has won the competition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers National Concrete Canoe Competition website.

But civil engineering senior Kyle Marshall, the project manager, said while his team did not have an advantage in the scoring by being the host team, it did
provide motivation to win.

Cal Poly scored 96.5 points out of a possible 100, one of the highest scores ever in the competition. University of Nevada, Reno, finished second with 77.5 points. The difference between first and second place last year was four points, Marshall said.

Furthermore, this year was the first time Cal Poly has won the event, although it came close in previous years, placing third last year and second in 2006. Cal Poly’s canoe, Amazona, was 80 pounds lighter than last year’s, which weighed 181 pounds.

The 20-foot canoe was the product of more than 4,600 hours of work.

“It is very exciting,” he said of the victory. “It’s the culmination of years of hard work.”

The most exciting moment for the team, Marshall said, was when it got the scorecard back and saw there were no deductions in the judged categories. Marshall said any deductions would have greatly decreased Cal Poly’s chances of winning and the judges are “very picky.”

Students have the opportunity to turn their in-class training into tactile work.

Kathy Caldwell, a civil engineering graduate and president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers, said the competition helps students take what they have learned in the classroom and apply it to a physical problem.

“It is a practical application to solve a fun project,” she said. “How does that ever go out of style?”

Team members start practicing for the races in September in order to try and make the final team, Gursky said. Prospective team members use canoes from previous years to train until the practice canoe is ready in December, he said.

Teams compete in five different races: men’s and women’s sprints, men’s and women’s endurance and a co-ed sprint. Cal Poly won both men’s teams events as well as the co-ed sprint. The women’s teams came in second.

Cal Poly also had the top presentation and top final product, and came in second behind the University of Nevada, Reno in the design paper.

The team hopes to repeat its success next year but will do so without any of this year’s team captains, and with only one women’s returning paddler, civil engineering senior Renee Morales.

One of the great things about going away to school is moving to a new town and having the opportunity to reinvent yourself. Here in Austin, that normally means hitting music festivals such as South By Southwest and The Austin City Limits Music Festival, getting tattoos and, my favorite, watching roller derby.

Although roller derby has been around since the 1930s, the sport gained national popularity during the 1960s and 1970s when the first roller derby games were broadcast on television. The sport, known for its coed teams and all-out brawls, has evolved into an all-female favorite pastime for rockabilly misfits and spectacle-seekers.

The all-female amateur roller derby movement Austinites worship today was started in 2001 with the founding of TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls. By day, The Lonestar Rollergirls are students, business professionals and mothers, but by night they are rockin’, sexy and badass rollergirls.

Because of my past athleticism and love of skating, I decided the TXRD was the perfect way to reinvent myself, so I spent Sunday afternoon in a South Austin warehouse being coached by the stars of the Lonestar Rollergirls during a rigorous boot camp and tryout session.

The experience was unmatched by anything I’ve ever done. I spent five hours in a hot warehouse with women of varying ages and skating skills. Some of the girls had never been on four-wheeled skates and others were seasoned “roller girls” from other states. Watching the pros was intimidating at first, but one of the coaches reminded us that “we can teach you to skate, but we can’t give you heart.”

Boot camp was brutal. As we skated around the famous Rollergirls’ banked track, we learned how to fall in a way that would “hurt us the least.” We rejoiced when someone had a good run, and even encouraged them to get back up when they fell with their bellies skidding across the track. Not one of us gave up — We were all determined, even as we dripped with sweat and swatted away flies.

Afterwards, the girls and I leaned against the metal bleachers panting, cursing and asking ourselves why we were doing this. Why were we putting our bodies through such pain and humiliation? The answer was simple: We had all seen the Drew Barrymore film “Whip It!,” starring Marcia Gay Hardin and Ellen Paige. We remembered laughing as Paige’s character skated in her Barbie roller skates during her try out, and recalled the triumph as she earned her derby name, “Babe Ruthless.” If skinny little Ellen Paige could become a rough and tough “derby girl,” so could we.

I survived roller derby boot camp that afternoon, and then prepared for my official tryout. Physical and mental exhaustion rid me of any lingering nerves I had, and I showed the Lonestar Rollergirls what I was made of — for better or worse. I find out this week if I made it through to “New Girl Training.” I really hope I make it, but if it turns out I don’t, I still smell like a rollergirl.

What was once an innovative and remarkable three-story “cathedral” made of unusual objects such as bicycles, hubcaps, old plaques and stained-glass walls now lays in an array of smaller structures and piles scattered across Vincent Hannemann’s backyard in Austin, Texas.

Hannemann, creator of the “Cathedral of Junk,” has officially closed his backyard wonderland in South Austin to all visitors because of anonymous complaints regarding safety violations. Many citizens of Austin have been so fascinated by the structure that Hannemann has even held weddings, plays and birthdays at the cathedral for free.

The Cathedral of Junk is a large construction of different items that Hannemann has collected over time and consists of different rooms, two of which he has labeled “The Throne Room” and “Surf Canada.” The cathedral has been a major hot spot for both tourists from all over the world and local visitors for many years, and was considered a large part of the “Keep Austin Weird” cultural movement.

“I think it’s ridiculous they’re making him take it down. It’s a travesty, and a step backwards for the city,” said Red Wassenich, who coined the phrase “Keep Austin Weird.”

Wassenich said he hopes this isn’t the end of the Cathedral of Junk. Hannemann said he has continually added elements to the cathedral for 21 years, and admirers of the cathedral donated most of the objects that made up the astonishingly large structure.

Hannemann’s favorite object that went into the cathedral is an old plaque he came across that reads, “Donated by The Women’s Golf Association 1959.” He said he was fascinated by the antiquity and mystery of the plaque and wondered to himself, “Where are those ladies now?”

Thirty to 40 percent of the cathedral has already been dismantled, but the city of Austin continues to reject Hannemann’s attempts to acquire a building permit for the structure. On March 9, the city received a citizen complaint about the cathedral having electrical extension chords, no building permit and no certificate of occupancy.

Hannemann said that on March 10, the city gave him seven days to alter the cathedral so it would comply with building regulations. Hannemann and several volunteers set out to make it happen, but it proved to be a much more difficult process than expected. He said they became conflicted with complying with the city regulations and also trying to keep the original structure.

Each week, Hannemann called the city to ask for an extension so he could continue to modify the cathedral in accordance with the city’s standards.

“When you’ve got aluminum ladders and a three-story structure that’s built illegally, there are a lot of safety issues,” said Melissa Martinez, division manager for the city’s Code Compliance Department.

He slowly started disassembling the cathedral and described the process as “the death of a thousand cuts.” Finally, the cathedral had been altered so much that Hannemann asked himself, “Why should I even bother getting a building permit if you can’t get on it or underneath it? It’s not really a cathedral anymore; so much of it has already been torn down.”

On Wednesday morning, Hannemann met with city officials and explained that he did not want a building permit anymore because it was no longer the Cathedral of Junk, and they replied that he had to buy a demolition permit to tear it down.

Neighbors are crushed that the cathedral is being demolished, but they are also relieved.

“I liked the artwork, but I wasn’t a big fan of all the people it brought,” neighbor Paul Gaither said. “It got to every night there would be cars piled up all the way down the road, every day, all day long.”

Hannemann has remained positive throughout the process, saying that he was pretty much done with the cathedral and couldn’t add much more to it.
“I’ve looked for the silver linings, and I’ve found them,” he said. “I’m only 47, so my artistic career is not close to over.”

As a joint campus effort, led by the office of Spring/Summer Enrollment, BYU administration hope to invite more students to attend spring and summer terms by creating an opportunity to participate in a memorable event — the Cougar Cooldown.

“We want students to feel part of something fun and exciting during spring/summer so they will want to attend again next year,” said Lori Gardiner, manager of spring/summer enrollment. “We’d like to generate this idea that if you don’t stay for spring/summer, you will miss out on something awesome.”

U. Kentucky claims to have broken the largest water balloon fight record last August with 3,902 participants and 119,211 water balloons. This year, BYU hopes to write its name in the Guinness Book of World Record with 4,000 participants and 120,000 water balloons.

Following the Cougar Cooldown event, the Red Cross will set up a blood drive for participants to complete meaningful service.

“The Red Cross was really excited that we were putting on this activity because during the spring and summer, blood donations are significantly lower, so they are always in constant need,” said Kyle Osborne, spring/summer assistant.

In addition to throwing thousands of water balloons and serving those in need, students participating in the Cougar Cooldown will receive a free lunch and T-shirt.

“You get to have fun but you’re also serving,” said Kendra Larsen, spring/summer assistant. “It’s a great thing to be a part of as a student at BYU.”

The Cougar Cooldown check-in will begin at 11 a.m., with the water balloon fight starting at noon at the RB field. Students, faculty and staff are encouraged to participate and register online at springsummer.byu.edu.

“I think it will be awesome to see 120,000 water balloons flying through the air,” Gardiner said. “I also think that breaking a world record and becoming part of BYU history as well as world history is an amazing accomplishment.”

No. In fact, I was doing it because if I had stayed in the relative comfort and safety of home, I would have had to work on the pool.

Most people think that pools are great in the summer. Perfect for beating the heat and having fun at the same time. Those people have never owned one.

In reality a pool is an exception to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the disorder of a system always increases. In my experience, a pool starts out a state of maximum disorder and gets worse as the summer goes on.

For example, as soon as my Dad and I took the cover off the pool we found a dead frog. A couple days later he pulled a drowned mouse out of there and the day after that I came across a waterlogged rabbit. Any day now I confidently expect to wake up and have to hire a tow truck because there’ll be a deer in there. A carefully tended pool can, in fact, wipe out an entire ecosystem over an average summer. A poorly tended pool will become filled with noxious algae and become a breeding ground for mosquitoes and take on an overwhelming resemblance to vomit.

Another problem with pools is that, as the owner, your friends expect you to invite them over to go swimming, avoiding the lines, urine and cost of public pools. However, after hours of backbreaking labor getting all the bugs and leaves out of the pool, removing dead bears and scrubbing away a bird poop stain from last year so that the pool and the area surrounding it are absolutely spotless . . . a friend will complain that “there’s too much chlorine.”

Then you will laugh and wonder how you could have chosen such a moron for a friend. Not only is the amount of chlorine in your pool far less than what it is in a public pool, but that chemical is the main line of defense between your health and the microbial life that loves water, sunlight and dead organic matter to feast on and become a dangerous infection.

Even worse they may stick all of one toe into the water and declare that it is “too cold,” ignoring the fact that not only is that the point, but that on an 80 degree day a pool temperature of 70 is going to be cool in comparison until your body has adjusted by doing things like swimming and actually being in the water.

Ultimately, when that happens the day will end on a sour note: after drowning them, your ex-friend’s body just will not burn properly in a common household mortuary incinerator.

Now, after spending the previous day on back-breaking manual labor to make your pool absolutely spotless and clean, you can relax and enjoy it that way for a few days, right? Nope, you haven’t been paying attention to the bit about thermodynamics.

See, the heart of the problem is that Satan is the patron god of pools. As soon as you turn your back algae spawned from the loins of the Evil One himself will start growing in the cracks and creases of the pool’s lining. This necessitates deploying the algaecide to kill it and also means you need to add more chlorine. All of that will kill the algae, but it will also mess up the pH balance of the pool, making the water more acidic and requiring the addition of a neutralizing agent to put it back into balance.

As if that wasn’t enough, once you’ve killed the algae it becomes an unpleasant slime clinging to the bottom of the pool and you need to vacuum, which is shorthand for “more back-breaking manual labor.”

That’s just the pool itself. On the mechanical end, there’s a pump and filter that circulates and “cleans” the water. Try as you might, patching it and taking good care of it and making sure very carefully that the system is airtight, you will never never never ever get it to stop leaking and loosing pressure. By the the fourth time it has started leaking after you’ve taken the entire system apart and put it back together—during which time the algae, leaves, bugs and all the neighborhood pets have made a concentrated, all out attack devoted to befouling the water—you’re so fed up with the thing you just put a towel under it, which promptly develops mold and crawls into a dark corner.

Those are just a few of the problems you can face as the owner of a pool. I’d write more, but I really should haul that moose out before it decomposes.

“I thought the event was a total success,” said Jake Schnall, a third-year in marketing and logistics and an organizer of the run. “We collected a ton of clothes, everyone had a blast and no one was injured. I think this might become a tradition at OSU.”

Schnall estimated 2,000 people were at the run.

The run began at about 9:45 p.m. with a Columbus Police cruiser clearing the streets and leading the way. Students ran chanting “U-S-A” and singing, “We Don’t Give a Damn for the Whole State of Michigan.” Many along the route gathered outside their homes to watch the half-naked runners.

The mass of students running in their underwear, along with additional police and chants for OSU, the scene Thursday night brought back memories of another Thursday night tradition at OSU — the Mirror Lake jump — without the frigid temperatures and dirty lake smell.

According to AXE’s Facebook page, the purpose of an undie run is to “unwind and give back to the community” by having students “run buck-ass wild across campus.” AXE picked OSU and nine other schools to participate in undie runs across the country and donate clothes shed to local homeless shelters.

The majority of students were dressed in boxers, bras and briefs, but some got creative with their outfits. Ryan Blatz, a fourth-year in computer science, ran in a head-to-toe lime green bodysuit similar to the Green Man suit from the television show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Tyler McCarrom, a third-year in horticulture, ran in nothing but a diaper.

Students came out to run for many reasons. Some said they came to give back to the homeless, others said it was a good distraction from homework, and a few said they came out just because they were drunk.

Alisha Chow, AXE Brand Ambassador to OSU and a fourth-year in communication, said much of the event’s success can be attributed to Facebook. Many people who came said they heard about the run through a Facebook invite to the event. Much of the advertising for the event was done through the popular networking site because just about every college student has a Facebook and that’s where they hear about events, Chow said.

This is the first year AXE has held the Undie Run Challenge. AXE has also pledged to donate $5,000 to each of the charities chosen by the universities.

Whichever school accumulates the most clothes will win a statue of a half-naked person. It looks as if Arizona State U. will receive the statue, with a donation of 5,300 pounds of clothing. OSU placed fourth in the challenge.

The senior class will now hold the Guinness record for the world’s longest human massage chain. The previous record, set in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2001, involved 617 people.

The Senior Class Council organized the event in an effort to unite the senior class for a final, lighthearted accomplishment. “We thought breaking a world record would be a fun and interactive way to bring everyone together,”  Senior Class President Fernando Cutz said.

Guinness requires that the massage chain last for 3 minutes, and Cutz counted down the minutes with a megaphone. A Guinness photographer was on hand to document the massage, and 15 independent community members served as judges.

According to Cutz, the Senior Class Council considered other record-breaking possibilities before deciding on a massage chain.

“Originally we were going to do one where we would put Mentos inside Coke bottles and explode them, but we decided that wasn’t interactive enough. We thought [a massage chain] would be a more fun, more interactive thing to do,” Cutz said.

Chancellor Mark Wrighton, who was present to participate in the massage chain, credits the Class of 2010 for the event’s success.

“I think this has been one of the more organized, more enthusiastic classes in terms of school spirit, and it’s been fabulous to see that enthusiasm at our University,” he said.

This isn’t the first record-breaking attempt that Wrighton has seen from his students: In 2005, 926 members of the incoming freshman class gathered to play the world’s largest game of Simon Says.

But Wrighton was enthusiastic about the Senior Class Council’s particular choice of record.

“It’s relaxing!” he said.

Cutz said that he hopes the record-breaking event will be something that this year’s senior class can remember after Wash. U.

“It will be very cool to pick up the Guinness Book of World Records and find our name in there as the Class of 2010.”

The fourth annual Atomic Athletic Great Black Swamp Olde Time Strongman Picnic featured feats of strength and spectacle, as well as educational clinics on strength training. The picnic has become more popular in recent years by an increased interest in both functional strength training and strongman performances, which were once a staple of circus sideshows.

“I brought it back to show all the different manifestations of strength that are out there,” Roger LaPointe, president and founder of Atomic Athletic, said. “Trying to show some of the best of the best doing it for everybody else.”

The performances began with truck pulls followed by atlas stone lifting, an event where heavy stone spheres are picked up from the ground, popularized by the World’s Strongest Man competition. Competitive and amateur strongmen participated, lifting stones up to 290 pounds.

Brothers Nick and Stewart Rosendaul showcased their strength by bending horseshoes, frying pans and metal bars, along with ripping decks of cards. A highlight of the performance was a balancing act where Stewart hoisted his daughter Brianna above his head.

Later performances emphasized showmanship, with displays by professional strongmen Andrew Durniat and Logan Christopher. Under the name Andrew Durniat and his Flying Dumbells, Durniat juggled metal weights and performed stunts with barbells weighing over 100 pounds. Christopher pulled a classic fire truck across a parking lot using just his hair.

The two also participated in a juggling competition with rules similar to the basketball game, H-O-R-S-E, but using large weights. Durniat worked with LaPointe to develop a throwback to circus strongmen that would combine power and showmanship.

“I did a single arm snatch with a bar he made, and he said, ‘Hey, what else can you do?,’” Durniat said.

LaPointe suggested they work together to replicate a routine that had been popular in the ”30s but not practiced since.

“I went into the gym and started toying around with it, and right now I’m the only one around that is doing this routine,” Durniat said.

The inspiration for Christopher’s hair pulling truck act came from a similar source.

“I read about an old time strongman by the name of the Mighty Adam, and he did many feats of strength, one of which was pulling vehicles by his hair,” Christopher said.

“On two separate occasions he stopped a small airplane from taking off with his hair. After reading that and getting into the strongman thing I decided to give it a try. Its just been bigger vehicles each time.”

The picnic was about more than spectacle with several educational lectures on lifting and martial arts. Special attention was given to Olympic lifting, with demonstrations given by three-time Olympian Fred Lowe and Todd Baden, owner of Synergy Sports and Performance in Toledo. Olympic lifting is focused on a few specific lifts that emphasize athleticism and speed, as well as power.

“There’s more and more of the functional craze of trying to mimic movement in sports,” Baden said. “The quest to make something more explosive or powerful has brought to the forefront focus on movements.”

Circus Vera, a Bowling Green-based circus troupe filled in the spaces between strongmen acts, including performances such as walking on a staircase made of machetes, fire eating and glass walking. Circus Vera contributed to the carnival atmosphere, bringing a side-show of preserved animal mutations. The group was founded in December 2008 by BGSU student Logan Jacot.

Other shows at the event were martial arts demonstrations and a performance by Bob Nickerson. Nickerson is a comedic juggler who goes by the name the Jock-ular Juggler.

The picnic has increased in length each year since its inception, and performers from as far as Russia have contacted LaPointe about getting involved. LaPointe has already found strongmen to be involved for next year, and is focused on growth and improvement in the future.

“It just keeps getting bigger every year. We have constant mini-clinics and performances that will easily take up to six hours today,” he said. “It’s very possible that this could end up being a multi-day event at some point, because we keep going a little bit earlier and a little bit later for the start and finish.”

Uniforms for the tourney took an interesting twist, as all players wore “prom dresses” with their socks and cleats.

The tourney is the team’s main fundraiser, and proved successful with an impressive turn-out of players and fans. After beating UW-Stevens Point 12-0 their first game and UW-Eau Claire 12-5 their second, the UWO ruggers faced Eau Claire again in the Championship game and took 2^nd place.

Time passed, it was almost 11 p.m. The area quickly erupted into a frenzy of giggles and shouts.

A deafening scream signaled that it was the time. A slow chant began and grew faster.

“Undie Run. Undie Run. Undie Run.”

A flurry of shirts and pants flew into the air to reveal both creative and disturbing undergarments.

This was the third Annual CSU Undie Run, a tradition that blends fun and philanthropy into a night of chaos and camaraderie.

“It was a good portion bigger than last year,” said Undie Run organization President Chandler Stewart.

The group collected 80 trash bags full of clothing at the end of the night from the estimated 1,500 students who participated. Last year, about 700 to 800 people turned out for the event.

“The amount of quality clothing we received for Haiti and Chile was beyond my expectations,” said co-creator Michele Hynes, in an e-mail to the Collegian.

Participants were equally as happy.

“It’s just awesome,” said participant Corissa Venrick, who sported mismatched underwear and threw condoms to other runners.

Girls put on their sexiest lingerie, as did the men. Others sported costumes, from thong-wearing fairies to diaper-wearing man-babies.

Sophomore Robbie Gallagher chose to fight the cold in a fuzzy gorilla suit and blue boxer shorts. He, like most, came to find release from upcoming stress of finals.

“It’s nice because I don’t have to use it too often,” Gallagher said about his costume.

At 11 p.m., the mass of half-naked students flooded past the Engineering Building and into the streets.

Skin and the smell of vodka floated down Laurel Street as passerby ogled the herd of unruly college youth galloping without inhibitions.

Juniors Brooke McConnell and Audra Snyder saw the panty parade from their home on Meldrum Street.

“I just saw a mass amount of skin out,” McConnell said. “I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Many people took the opportunity to run into the road as the lights turned red. Drivers honked at the scene, confused at the hoard of pant-free adults who were trailed by police.

Participants made their way back to the Plaza after 20 minutes. The crowd flooded into the library until CSU police evacuated them.

“I thank everyone who came out donated and helped clean up after. A successful night to say the least,” Hynes said.

While “getting discovered” usually applies to models and actors, a new company called Hire Me Tee, Inc. is hoping to help financial advisers, personal trainers and even dog walkers catch their big break.

Launched in December of 2009, the business produces T-shirts and sweatshirts that read “HIRE ME” followed by the type of job a person is seeking.

Andrej Bula, founder of the company, said after working in human resources jobs for 15 years, he thinks the self-branding approach is the most effective way to get noticed — and hired.

“You hear unique stories about unconventional ways of finding jobs,” Bula said. “Creativity and differentiation is ultimately rewarded.”

Human resources offices receive thousands of applications, and in many cases a student’s résumé will never even be seen, Bula said, adding between 50 and 80 percent of open positions aren’t even posted on company websites because there is already an ample number of people in the applicant pool.

In its first year of operation, Bula said the company has already had some success and is looking to expand. Bula declined to divulge specific figures related to the company’s success. New fonts and possibly an expansion to include hats are in the works for the coming months.

Though an attention-grabbing T-shirt might prove to be a successful approach for some, others are more skeptical.

Catharine Wahl, a Penn State U. junior, said she thinks the self-marketing strategy would actually have the opposite effect and ultimately dissuade potential employers from approaching.

“I can’t really imagine it would be good in most markets,” Wahl said. “It would get a laugh, but it seems unprofessional.”

Bula said he is also looking to expand the Hire Me brand to include universities and sell shirts that might state something like, “HIRE ME/ I’m a Penn State alumni.”

But Penn State marketing department chair William Ross said he believes the idea will be short-lived.

“It’s cute, and it ought to be interesting to people,” Ross said. “This is going to run its course. I really don’t think it will be as useful in the long-term as having a Facebook Web page.”

Students who are looking for more information about Hire Me Tee, Inc. can visit the website at hiremetee.com.

His naked, silver body attracting the eye of all who see him.

Particularly the police officers who arrested him on Auburn U.’s campus Friday afternoon.

“I can confirm on April 23, Friday, at 12:02 a.m. we arrested a William Hudson,” said Capt. Tom Stofer of the Auburn Police Department. “(We) arrested him and charged him with public lewdness, public intoxication and resisting arrest.”

Hudson was taken to the Lee County Detention Center after his arrest, Stofer said.

Phi Delta Theta Chapter President Chris Mills denied rumors that the streaking stunt is a tradition that kicks off the fraternity spring party.

“He was not streaking,” Mills said, “he had an article of clothing on.”

This spring’s Mercury Man wore silver paint, a silver winged bike helmet and a jockstrap.

While winging his way across campus he darted into James McKelly’s noon Survey of American Literature II class in the Haley Center.

“I was just talking to another girl in my class and I looked up and there was a naked silver guy leaning over a desk,” said Brittnee Handley, senior in English, and student in the class. “I just thought it was some stupid fraternity stunt, to be honest.”

Mercury Man was accompanied by another man with a video camera who was recording the stunt, said Dale Stinson, senior in English, who was also in the class.

Stinson said the streaker seemed really out of breath and mentioned that he thought the classroom was really hot.

Stinson said Mecury Man was not in the room for more than a few minutes, and, soon after, students by the window saw him being arrested on the Concourse between the Haley Center and the Student Center.

Courtni Ward, sophomore in international business and Spanish, and her tour group of approximately 15 prospective students also got an eyeful of Mercury Man.

“When we were on top of Haley, one of the parents pointed out that the streaker was running across the Concourse and there was a guy following him on a bike videotaping him,” Ward said. “My first instinct was to get them away, because I didn’t want anything bad to influence their decision.”

However, in addition to the topless tomfoolery, the group also received a lesson in campus safety.

As Ward was trying to hustle her group away from the nudity, Hudson was arrested.

Mills refused to elaborate because he said the issue hasn’t been straightened out with the Interfraternity Council.

Brian Cronauer won’t stop till he gets enough — enough people to break the Guinness World Record for the most people doing the Michael Jackson “Thriller” dance, that is.

Cronauer, a Penn State U. sophomore, hopes to break the world record for the most people dancing to “Thriller” by gathering 14 to 15,000 people together on Oct. 16 and dancing to one of the late singer’s most famous songs.

The current record is held by 13,597 people who danced in Mexico City on Aug. 29 — Michael Jackson’s birthday.

Cronauer said he considers Penn State to be “Zombie Nation,” so it is only fitting that the world record would be set here.

“I’m a big Michael Jackson fan and I guess I want other people to have as much fun as I do doing it,” he said.

Cronauer had planned to set the record with about 400 people last fall at the Altoona campus. However, once the high record was set in Mexico, Cranauer decided to wait until he transferred to University Park where he could draw on a larger pool of students — although non-students or students who don’t attend Penn State are welcome to participate.

Cronauer has been a “Thriller” and Michael Jackson fan for years.

After teaching it to himself in high school he taught the cheerleading squad the dance so they could perform it during halftime.

“It’s just a huge part of our culture,” Cronauer said. “Michael Jackson is a good workout too; I would practice for three hours at a time just over and over again.”

Jacey Hallock, a PSU sophomore, was one of the cheerleaders Cronauer taught in high school, and as a Penn State student she plans to help set a new world record next fall.

“It’s important because it was so monumental when [Michael Jackson] made that video. So for us to get a bunch of people together to do this — to go out there and show everybody — it just keeps Michael Jackson alive,” Hallock said.

Sophomore Amanda Hess said she had planned on participating last fall and plans to participate in October.

“It’s something [Brian is] intensely passionate about and I think it would be really neat to see everybody doing it and obviously being a part of a world record would be cool,” she said.

Cronauer has not yet contacted anyone about a space to hold the dance, but he said he would like to hold it in either Beaver Stadium or in a parking lot near East Halls.

He also said he hopes to hold a practice session Labor Day weekend so people have a chance to learn and practice the “Thriller” dance.

“I pee in the shower.”

“I flick boogers at my roommate’s stuff when she’s too loud and wakes me up in the morning.”

“When I’m in a crowded elevator I envision the porn scene that could ensue.”

“I tell people I’m an atheist, but I believe I’m going to hell.”

These are just a small sampling of the 500,000 secrets that people have written on postcards and sent to the home of Frank Warren, a man known as “the most trusted stranger in America.”

Warren, creator and curator of the PostSecret project, introduced himself to several hundred students and community members on Monday, April 26 at Carnegie Mellon U., saying: “Hi. My name is Frank, and I collect secrets.”

Warren began collecting secrets in 2004, when he handed out 3000 self-addressed postcards to strangers in Washington, D.C. and invited them to send him a secret: something that was true and they had never shared before. “Slowly, secrets began to find their way to my mailbox,” Warren told The Tartan. He claims that the idea of submitting to PostSecret “spread virally,” and within the first month of the project, he had received enough secrets to begin posting them on the Web. Since January 2005, Warren has shared the unvoiced secrets of people from around the world on his blog, postsecret.blogspot.com.

With postcards arriving at his mailbox at a rate of over 1000 per week, Warren has gotten to know his mail carrier, Kathy, pretty well. “She’s a supporter of the project,” he said. Warren recalled an occasion when a fan stopped Kathy in the middle of her delivery route and asked for her autograph. Throughout the years, Kathy has delivered people’s secrets scrawled on sonograms, death certificates, a fake banana, real potatoes, complimentary bags of coffee, and even a bag from the fast food chain In-N-Out Burger. “The real gifts for me are the secrets…. I still feel like a kid Christmas morning walking out to my mailbox everyday and finding these gifts,” Warren said.

During his lecture at Carnegie Mellon, Warren explained that there are two types of secrets: secrets we keep from others, and secrets we keep from ourselves. “When we think we’re keeping a secret, that secret is actually keeping us.” He urged the audience members to face their own secrets: the parts of their lives that they sometimes prefer to bury down deep inside. He also urged people to free their secrets and to share them with others. Warren confided that he is now thankful for his struggles when he was younger, because “each one of them allowed me to develop my character as an adult now.”

CMU junior Laura Alfonso, who has had one of her submissions posted on Warren’s blog, said she appreciates the authenticity of PostSecret: “I think it’s about how honest people are — funny, silly, embarrassing, heartbreaking. There is a level of transparency there and honesty that you don’t really get from people a lot of times. I think what I look for in writing and art is a level of connection to people when we realize that everyone is just a person; we all have a lot in common.”

While many secrets that people submit to PostSecret are humorous, others are personal and dark.

Warren cited “staggering statistics” about the secrets that are often overlooked by media and popular culture. He receives an overwhelming number of secrets on the topics of loneliness, depression, and suicide. Warren has volunteered for Hopeline, and the PostSecret website’s “Wellness Resources” page currently provides contact information for 10 different crisis counseling hotlines.

After telling the story of his own PostSecret start, Warren asked the audience in Wiegand Gym, “What’s your crazy idea?… My hope is that someone in this room will maybe make the world a little bit better.”

His advice to students: “If you’re thinking about creating a blog, it’s a fantastic way to exercise your writing ability, your communication techniques…. Do it to explore one of your passions and find that other community out there that shares your passion. That can lead to something a lot more magical than just making a good income from a blog.”

Warren said that he has never taken a single dollar for an advertisement. Although the PostSecret site has received over 300 million hits, it is still ad-free. In addition to his blog, Warren has compiled and published five books filled with unvoiced secrets that people have shared with him. His most recent book, Confessions on Life, Death, & God, was released on Oct. 6, 2009.

When he gets off work, he trades in his professional attire and dress shoes for basketball shorts and sneakers. He’s played almost every day since he was about 5 years old.

Manley, 26, who lives in Parker, Colo., frequently travels to the U. Central Florida area to film his trick shots.

Most UCF students would be able to recognize the Waterford Lakes and Jefferson Village courts in a few of his videos on YouTube.

“I don’t know what it is, but I just have a natural ability for trick shots,” said Manley,  whose basketball trick shot videos have more than 1 million views.

Many viewers think Manley’s videos are fake or edited.

“Bruce was always so much better on the court than anybody else because he always spent more time on the court than anybody else,” said Thomas Litteer, Manley’s promoter, video editor and childhood best friend. “That’s what it all boils down to.”

Litteer helps promote Manley’s trick shot abilities so Manley can make a name for himself in the basketball world.

Manley flies to Orlando so that Litteer and his camera crew, which are based in Orlando, can film Manley’s trick shots.

“A lot of people count out Bruce when they see him on the court,” Litteer said. “But then after they see him play, they think he should be a [Harlem] Globetrotter.”

After injuring his shoulder while playing baseball when he was young, Manley found new ways to get creative on the basketball court.

“It wasn’t some catastrophic injury or anything, but it was just enough discomfort that [my shoulder] popped every time I tried throwing or shooting overhand,” Manley said.

Manley started to improvise shots to prevent any further injury to his damaged shoulder.

When he started to improvise, he discovered his hidden talent.

“When I was playing basketball and when I had to make a far pass, I started to throw it behind-the-back because for some reason, it wouldn’t put any strain on my shoulder,” Manley said. “Then I started to practice shooting like that.”

He has caught the attention of many eyes on the Internet thanks to his famous behind-the-back shot.

Shaquille O’Neal challenged him to a game of HORSE, Ashton Kutcher gave him a shout-out on Twitter and he recently won a $1,500 Spalding iHoop in a contest sponsored  by NBA player Gilbert Arenas called “iDrop Jaws.”

“I’ve been in a few contests before where I knew I had the best entry but I got screwed over,” Manley said. “It was great winning because Arenas picked me, but I’m going to sell the hoop because I need the money.”

Manley has decided that his new goal is to set a record for the world’s longest behind-the-back shot. There hasn’t been a record officially established, but Manley has already contacted Guinness World Records and plans to attempt a full-court shot.

“It would be pretty cool to say that I have a world record,” Manley said. “I just want to prove to everyone out there that what I do is real.”

He hopes to attempt the record sometime later this year, and surprise his millions of viewers on YouTube, just like he has been surprising people on the basketball court his entire life.

“It’s pretty fun, surprising people,” Manley said.

“This one time in college, I auditioned for Playboy.” What’s so great about it is it’s truly and completely out of character. I’m a self-proclaimed nerd. I named my cat after a Harry Potter character. No one, including me, would ever expect me to do such a thing as audition to pose naked in a nationally acclaimed magazine.

Yet, somehow, there I was, standing in front of a photographer with no clothes on.

But let’s go back to the beginning.

One does not simply wake up and decide one morning, “I think I’ll audition for Playboy today.” It all started when I began covering the Playboy Campus Representative program. During an interview about the program, I was told that the magazine would be doing a “Girls of the Pac 10” issue and would be visiting in the spring to hold auditions.

I immediately called dibs on the story.

All I wanted to do was cover the story, but then one of my editors got it into her head that I should do the audition and write a column as well.

I laughed at her.

Then, I thought about it some more and decided it actually sounded like a lot of fun. I had already been on a weight-loss journey, why not add self-discovery to the mix?

So I signed myself up.

Then I began the pre-Playboy audition process. This includes hiring a personal trainer to work on toning up, tanning to emphasize my unique mix of a racial background, and, of course, waxing.

It was not cheap, but when I showed up at the audition, I was feeling pretty good about myself.

I’m not going to lie, I was nervous as all get-out, but I was confident in how I looked, and that led to more confidence in how I felt.

So when the photographer, who was nicer than nice and also really cute, told me to take it off, I did.

The auditions were tons of fun. The Playboy people and the other girls were all really nice, and we got to jump on a bed. I haven’t jumped on a bed since I was a kid!

The auditions consisted of a personal photo shoot, ranging from in my undies down to completely naked. And, of course, the jumping on the bed shoot.

A fellow Evergreener and I did the shoot together for moral support. So not only did I strip down in front of the photographer, I also got naked in front of a girl that I have to see and work with. And I did it with no hesitation.

Then we jumped on a bed. Together. Naked. And had a blast doing it.

All in all, I’m glad that I did it. I would absolutely love to be picked, but even if I’m not, I can at least say that I had the confidence to show up and try. And that’s good enough for me.

Hannah gave the presentation after signing his new contract with Comedy Central this week to expand its media sphere to television and begin an Onion sports show January 2011.

He added the Independent Film Channel and Sundance Channel both agreed to air the Onion’s news frame show over the course of the past month.

These developments have come from Onion Inc.’s advancement from publishing a traditional newspaper to developing the online Onion News Network, which an unnamed New York Times correspondent said was a better news production than The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.

The Onion has also created free web based radio reports, a movie and several books since its establishment in Madison in 1988, Hannah said.

According to entrepreneurship in society professor Jeanan Yasiri, Hannah previously served as the managing editor for the Milwaukee Journal.

Despite this prestigious role, Hannah said satire is a more significant news source than those commonly considered reputable by the general public.

“There is more truth to what we do in satire, really, than there is in what passes as mainstream news today,” Hannah said.

When Hannah’s colleague from the New York Times said one week’s edition of the Onion has more truth than a month of New York Times articles, he said he truly recognized the power of his satirical journalism.

Hannah cited past examples of revolutionary intellectuals, such as Voltaire’s work and Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” as ways satire has transformed society.

Instead of focusing the principles of business, Hannah recommends reading classic literature as a means of both gaining insight about life and succeeding in our society for college business students.

UW senior Calee Harrington said she liked the presentation and thinks keeping humor in more serious aspects of life is vitally important.

“[The lecture was] very refreshing… because no one [ever] jokes or does anything like this in their presentation,” Harrington said.

But for U. Pittsburgh junior Andrew Dilla, this trek is an exciting reality.

Dilla, who is from Edinboro, Pa., is a youth ambassador for impossible2Possible, a nonprofit group that encourages people to perform feats of strength and endurance to raise awareness about sustainability and other world issues.

Ray Zahab, the founder of impossible2Possible, said he created the organization to show people that they have the capacity to do extraordinary acts.

“We so underestimate what we are capable of doing,” he said. “We have limitless potential.”

Dilla, 20, leaves today to make his journey to the north African country of Tunisia with three other students — all from Canada — to demonstrate the importance of clean drinking water.

Pushing the limits

To qualify for the trip, Dilla, who is in the Panther Cycling Club at Pitt, filled out an application with essay questions and then had a phone interview with Bob Cox, impossible2Possible’s executive director.

“I guess my bike trip and the Boston Marathon were kind of selling points,” he said.

Two summers ago, Dilla and his father bicycled 3,800 miles from San Francisco to Yorktown, Va., in 49 days. Prior to that, he participated in the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon in San Diego, for which he raised $3,800 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Local and regional bands surrounded the race track while Dilla ran the 13-mile course. He clocked in at 3 hours and 10 minutes.

Last year, Dilla, who was part of his high school’s cross country, track and football teams, ran the Boston Marathon as well.

He said he expects his experiences in Tunisia to be different from his experiences in marathons.

“It will be a lot slower. It’s not a race, and it’s a lot more team-based. We’ll be taking a lot of breaks — it doesn’t take all day to run 20 miles,” he said. He added that there won’t be fans cheering the team on either, like in his past races.

Dilla said he has been training for this trip by himself since the end of January, when he learned that he had been accepted to the impossible2Possible program.

He also received Olympic-level training from Zahab’s brother, John, who coaches some Canadian Olympic athletes. The training program he made for the team began on Feb. 8.

Dilla said the regimen includes running six days per week: One day is speed work, one day is hill work and weekends are devoted to long runs that could last for two hours.

“One of the most important parts about it was running with a hydration pack [a backpack with a hose that allows runners to drink hands free], because we have to get used to taking … fluids while running and eating on the run,” he said.

He said he spends much of his time running on soft surfaces, such as those found in Schenley Park and Frick Park, because they have less impact on his joints.

The terrain of the desert will present a change, though. A large part of the region the team is running through is salt flats, but there will probably be sand dunes as well, he said.

To prepare for the change of scenery, Dilla consulted an unusual source — Star Wars. Scenes from the movie featuring the fictional planet Tatooine were shot in Tunisia.

“I actually just watched ‘A New Hope’ the other day to see where I’ll be going,” he said. “There’s a canyon where that part of ‘Star Wars’ was filmed in, and ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ was also filmed there.”

He said the route through Tunisia will begin in Tozeur, in southwest Tunisia, and end in Gabes, along the country’s southeastern coast.

Cox and Zahab, both of whom having experience with endurance events, will accompany the team.

“I’ll be running every step of the way,” Cox said. “We run as a team. It’s not a race. It’s their expedition; we’re there to support them.”

Dilla said the two train “a little bit differently” than other team members do, but both are very experienced with running.

While they are in Tunisia, Zahab, Dilla and the other team members will film videos for “BackStory,” a show on CNN International and will be videoconferencing with about 10,000 students in the United States and Canada.

The conferences will be in real time through satellite communication. The team does not yet know what time it will hold the video conferences, but there is an 8-hour time difference between British Columbia, on Canada’s western coast, and Tunisia.

CNN International provided the team with Flip video cameras so its members can upload videos throughout their trip, Cox said. He said daily coverage of the team will begin next Monday.

A new adventure

The actual run will represent only one facet of Dilla’s trip. He said he’s excited to learn about Tunisian culture.

Dilla said he was raised Catholic, but that he thinks Islam is interesting, and has always been curious about it. He added that he went to a mosque last Friday to “check it out.” Dilla said it was an interesting and informative experience. He said the customs were similar to ones he saw in Morocco during Semester at Sea.

“The prayer motions were really intense,” he said, adding that he went through the motions with the congregation.

But Dilla isn’t excited about all aspects of the trip, despite loving adventures — he said he has a couple fears about being in such a desolated area.

“We’re going to have a support team and Land Rovers carrying our gear with us, and we’re sleeping in tents and not showering for 10 days. That’s probably going to be the worst part — and going to the bathroom in the desert because we’re not going to have toilets,” he said.

Dilla, who is majoring in history, hopes to graduate in December and then attend medical school. He said his current 18-credit load has not been easy but that his professors allowed him to reschedule his finals to make his trip across Tunisia. He said he worked with his professors to schedule some earlier and some for when he returns from Tunisia.

Texting “ttyl” instead of “talk to you later” may not save as much time as one might expect, according to a study conducted by 2009 Dartmouth College graduate Natalie Berger.

As part of Berger’s psychology honors thesis, Berger and Dartmouth education professor Donna Coch found that the brain is slower at processing text messaging language than standard written English.

The study identified similarities and differences between the way the brain processes words in text message phrases and conventional written English.

Although participants in the study processed text messages in nearly the same way as they would process any written language, an extra step was required for subjects’ brains to process texting language.

“The participants in the study were processing semantics of text messages in a way similar to their normal process,” Coch said. “Processing the semantics of text messages took a little longer and also had an additional part of processing.”

The study did not identify the extra processing step the brain undergoes, but the researchers assume it was a type of “further semantic processing,” Coch said in an e-mail to The Dartmouth.

Sixteen Dartmouth undergraduates, all of whom were female, participated in the study in the Winter and Spring of 2009.

“Through preliminary screening, we find that girls text more than boys do,” Coch said.

Participants were given text message sentences and conventional English sentences to read, and were asked to determine whether or not the final word in each sentence made sense, Coch said.

Berger observed the brain activity involved in processing both types of sentences through a cap that measures the brain’s electrical impulses, Coch said.

“In order to test what texting looks like in the brain, [Berger] looked at semantics, the meanings of words,” Coch said.

Overall, Berger and Coch found that the student’s responses were more accurate for conventional written English than for texting language, according to the study.

Students also took, on average, a couple hundred milliseconds longer to respond to the texting language than traditional English, the study found.

Some linguists have argued that texted English is a separate language from conventional written English, and has “not only has a distinct lexicon, but also operates using differential syntax,” Berger said in an e-mail. According to these linguists, people fluent in texted English may be considered bilingual.

The results of the study reinforced previous findings that compared the processing of native languages to that of non-native languages.

This is the first time the hypothesis has been extending to texting technology, according to the study.

Coch said she does not know of any previous studies that have compared aspects of the brain’s function while reading English and while processing texted information.

Berger first became interested in the topic when she worked as a research assistant in Coch’s Reading Brains Lab, according to Coch.

Berger uses text messaging frequently, which led her to discuss with Coch the possibility of doing an honors thesis on “how learning to text is like learning to read,” Coch told The Dartmouth.

Coch’s lab studies the development of reading-related skills and how the reading brain functions in both children and adults, according to the Reading Brains Lab web site.

The study was accepted for publication on Feb. 22, and was made available on Elsevier Science online on March 21.

The bounty of dwarfism programs can mostly be attributed to TLC, whose lineup seems to consist exclusively of reality shows about average-sized families of little people or extremely large families of average-sized people. But shows about obesity are virtually everywhere. The national epidemic is reflected in “TV Guide” – Discovery, NBC and even VH1 all have shows about losing weight.

The latest, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” on ABC, is about getting to the root of the obesity problem by changing America’s eating habits. That will be pretty hard to do, especially since KFC has started a revolution of its own with the Double Down sandwich.

The Double Down, debuting nationwide this week, is a grotesque masterpiece. If Michelangelo worked in grease, this is what he would create. The Double Down consists of bacon, melted cheese and something terrifyingly called “Colonel’s Sauce.” Where is the chicken, you ask? Well, forget everything you ever thought you knew about buns, because they have been replaced by two hulking fried chunks of bird.

KFC seems to have abandoned Kentucky Grilled Chicken, its weak attempt at following the healthier fast food trend led by restaurants such as McDonald’s, in favor of the only sandwich on the market that could accurately be described as Kafkaesque. Indeed, they are moving in the complete opposite direction and into bizarre, nightmarish realms never before explored by the American food industry.

Now, I usually have no qualms about junk food. I only go to fast food joints a few times a month, but when I do partake, I don’t shy away from the dark depths of the menu. On more than one occasion, I have ordered six KFC Buffalo Snackers to eat in one sitting. When you eat that much crap, the meal is divided into stages. The first two snackers go down fairly easily, but you’re just getting started. Halfway through the third one, you look at the remaining three and start to panic. On the fourth one, you feel your body starting to weaken and promise yourself never to do this again. By the fifth one, you’re angry at yourself, at KFC and at the world. When you finally get to the sixth one, you’re just depressed. You force it down and then cry yourself into a food coma.

When somebody who has done that multiple times is frightened of your sandwich, you’ve either failed or accomplished something magnificent. Or both.

If the sandwich is successful, the KFC just off campus could turn the already-feared freshman 15 into the freshman 50. And that may just be the start — if other places follow suit, we could see salads where the lettuce is replaced with beef jerky or cream cheese bagels where the bagels are replaced with more cream cheese. I have seen the future, and it is fat.

If you are brave enough to try the Double Down, please be careful. I don’t want my mother to see your story on the next episode of “I Nearly Died of Shame.”

— Nichols is a U. Kansas junior in creative writing.

The dash is a charity run held every semester at U. Florida in which participants donate clothes to the Salvation Army.

At Friday’s event, participants collected enough clothing to fill 26 30-gallon garbage bags.

Jorge Gomez, a UF electrical engineering graduate student, organized the nearly naked event.

“I really don’t do anything. I set the date, and I take the clothes to Salvation Army,” said Gomez, who has run in the dash since his freshman year. “But the run is what the runners make of it, and it’s really their spirit that keeps this going.”

Gomez said the event supports a good cause and makes runners feel connected to their fellow students, Gomez said.

“I feel like [the dash] is usually passed on by people who have done it before. They tell their freshmen friends,” Gomez said. “You come here and you get a real atmosphere and an understanding of what it means to be a Gator.”

Julia Yip, a UF linguistics and communicative disorders senior, ran in the dash for the first time.

“It’s an interesting charity because it’s exciting to do something different,” Yip said.

Matthias Gritschneder, a German post-doctoral student at Peking University in Beijing, was in Gainesville for an astrophysics conference. He spotted the half-clothed runners while leaving The Swamp Restaurant.

“I didn’t expect it at all, but I think it’s a good idea. It’s fun for the people, and it has a benefit as well,” Gritschneder said.

Gritschneder said he might have participated if he was not traveling with a limited amount of clothing.

“It is a much funnier way to donate,” Gritschneder said.

Steven McLeod, a chemical engineering junior, was willing to strip for the run, but said he wouldn’t run around in his underwear during broad daylight.

“I’m not that spontaneous,” McLeod said. “I wouldn’t throw off my clothes and run around campus, but if you give me a reason to, then sure.”

Five students launched partyschooltexts.com, an interactive Web site similar to textsfromlastnight.com that will allow users to vote for the No. 1 party school.

The Web site lists text message conversations categorized by universities and gives viewers a chance to vote on their favorites. The most popular posts will help determine the ranking.

“It’s ridiculous how the same company who produces SAT reviews also does party school rankings,” said Nick Gilboy, one of the creators. “College students know much more about partying than the Princeton Review does.”

Gilboy, 22, and Alex Baden, 21, came up with the idea two months ago after believing textsfromlastnight.com was misleading viewers with the use of area codes.

“College students rarely have phone numbers with the same area codes as their college town,” Baden said. “Their school doesn’t get credit for all the crazy things that happen.”

In collaboration with Kevin Ruiz, Sunil Tangri and Tony Feria, Gilboy and Baden equally financed the $1,000 start-up fee and hired a Web designer for the site’s design and coding.

“At this point, we aren’t asking for ads or trying to make a profit,” said Ruiz, who controls the marketing aspect with Feria. “We are trying to create an entertainment service for college students. It is interesting to see what school they think is really No. 1.”

The Web site has already received about 1,000 unique views, but the creators are hoping word of mouth will increase popularity out of state.

All five members plan on staying in Gainesville after graduation in May to concentrate on the new business, and they hope the site matches the level of textsfromlastnight.com.

“We are trying to add a level of accountability to schools who claim they party hard,” Ruiz said.

Nanasy proposed to Woodie on New Year’s Eve at Universal Studios during a Temptations concert.

“We were in the front row, snapping a million pictures right under the big sign that said ‘Don’t take any pictures,’” Woodie said. “Someone came from backstage with the security guard and said, ‘Sir, you need to come with us,’ and I thought he was getting busted for having the camera.”

A few minutes later, a woman came to get Woodie. As she was led backstage, she worried that Nanasy was in trouble.

Once backstage, she saw her boyfriend standing on stage with the Temptations.

“When the Temptations were performing I went up on stage and they brought her up and I proposed,” Nanasy said.  “Then they sang ‘My Girl.’”

After getting engaged, it was time to plan the wedding. Woodie said they considered using black and gold for their wedding colors, but her friends discouraged her from doing so.

“In lieu of that we did our engagement shoot at UCF,” she said.

The couple plan to have Knightro in the wedding as an usher and in a skit where he’ll provide the wedding rings to the pair.

Nanasy and Woodie started dating in January of 2002 after spending so much time together at events and in their spare time.

Michael Callahan, the current coach of the mascot team, met the pair at Knightro trials in 2002. Callahan said the Knightros did a lot of team building activities like scavenger hunts and sleepovers.

“Once we started doing activities as a team, you just start going out, four or five of you,” Nanasy said.

Woodie said she realized she had feelings for Nanasy when, at one point, they were the only two on the team. Once more teammates were added, Woodie said she was a bit jealous.

Nanasy and Woodie missed each other when they weren’t the only Knightros and weren’t spending all of their time together.

Before he was Knightro, Nanasy was a member of the drumline for three years.

“I saw Knightro at the events and I thought it would be something that was just really fun and different,” he said. “I wanted to be involved with athletics and school spirit, but not necessarily the drumline anymore.”

Woodie danced all through high school, but missed the UCF dance auditions, so she tried out for Knightro instead.

“It was kind of unconventional, but it seemed like a fun thing to do,” she said.
Nanasy said his experience as Knightro was incredible.

He used to smile in pictures with fans, even though his costume covered his face.

“It’s really hard to put into words,” he said. “There are so many unique experiences you only get by doing that. It’s wild because it takes a while to adapt to it.”

After eight years together, the former Knightros still have fun and make each other laugh.

“The joke is that one day we’ll have kids who will sit here and be our audience and we can entertain them,” Woodie said.

The event is an annual two-day celebration dedicated to embracing the cult following behind “The Big Lebowski,” the 1998 Coen brothers’ movie starring Oscar-winner Jeff Bridges as “The Dude.” This year’s festival takes place in Los Angeles April 2-3 at the Wiltern Theater and The Cal Bowl for the screening and bowling party, respectively.

The festival started out in 2002 in Louisville, Ky., after co-founders Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt bonded over the movie with fellow vendors at a tattoo expo.

“The first time we did it, we thought 20 of our friends would show up,” Russell said. “We ended up with 150 people.”

The festival has since expanded across the country and to the United Kingdom.

Russell and Shuffitt founded the festival for fans of the film to share their common obsession with the movie. The weekend consists of costumes, trivia contests and the drink White Russian, heavily featured in the film.

The festival thrives on the fans’ expert knowledge of all things Lebowski. It’s the difference between knowing that a White Russian is a sweet cocktail drink and that it is the drink the Dude is drinking when he’s drugged by a mob boss.

“All of it is pretty much an inside joke. That’s the fun of it. We all get it, and we’re all into it,” Russell said.

Despite expanding geographically and being recognized in publications as varied as The New York Times and Playboy magazine, Lebowski Fest has changed little from its origins eight years ago.

“It’s basically the exact same event that we started with,” Russell said.

David Hothersall, professor emeritus of psychology and something of an expert on the subject, tells the story like this:

In 1926, Rosalind Morrison won the Homecoming Queen election, but because only 10,000 students were enrolled and 12,000 votes had been cast, it was clear the election had been rigged.

“Rosie was named Queen, but as an honorable young woman, withdrew when the fraud became apparent,” Hothersall said. “The runner-up was Maudine Ormsby, a mystery candidate entered by the College of Agriculture.”

It turned out that Maudine was actually a Holstein cow. Despite this, she was still crowned and rode in the Homecoming parade.

However, she did not attend the dance.

“The ‘Maudine the Cow’ room is meant to honor Ohio State’s rich land grant and agricultural history,” said Heather McGinnis, director of development for the Office of Student Life and the Ohio Union.

Ohio State was originally called the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College and was founded as part of the Morrill Act, “which gave 10,000 acres of federal government land to each state to sell and use the proceeds to create a public university,” according to OSU’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences’ Ohioline Web site.

“Because agricultural is – and has always been – a significant focus for Ohio State, it is fitting that students from the College of Agriculture are responsible for one of Ohio State’s most unique and well-known Homecoming ‘happenings,’” McGinnis said.

The story of Maudine is still alive and well on campus. Or at least it is if you visit the office for the University Hosts and University Ambassadors programs. There you will find a large stuffed animal cow dressed in a “Go Buckeyes” T-shirt and a University Ambassadors jacket.

After winning the stuffed cow during a team-bonding event, the students in the programs remembered the story of Maudine and decided to name the stuffed animal in her honor.

“She’s part of the tradition and pride of Ohio State,” said Ebony Smith, University Ambassadors supervisor. “It makes sense that we’d want to recognize that in our own little special way.

“She is the unofficial mascot and we’re proud of her,” Smith said.

The Maudine Cow Room is located on the lower level of the new Ohio Union.

Shards of red, yellow, blue and green video-game targets were blasted apart Saturday as a U. Texas student smashed his way past the official Guinness World Records achievement for highest full-song set-list score on the Xbox 360 game “Rock Band 2.”

Civil engineering junior Matt Smith played all 84 “Rock Band 2” songs on the drums over the course of seven hours to beat the May 16 record score of 10,687,033 points, according to Guinness World Records. Like the previous record holder, gamer Robert Paz, Smith played at the hardest difficulty level — expert. He accumulated a score of 14,727,919 points and unofficially beat the record around 4:55 p.m. after he finished his 58th song, “Pinball Wizard” by The Who, with a score of 10,719,466 points.

Smith said he practiced video-game drums for 45 minutes to an hour a day after he finished his UT coursework.

“I had been playing for the past few years, but I bought the Guinness Book of World Records of 2009 around October of last year,” Smith said. “We were looking for records to break, and my friend showed me that one. I thought I could do it, so [October was] when I started working on it.”

It costs $5,000 a day to bring a Guinness World Records adjudicator to observe an attempt to break a record, so Smith opted to follow alternate rules, collecting and submitting media and expert testimony. Guinness World Records also required that he take no breaks, accept no help from friends, be unaware of upcoming songs and submit a recording of the attempt.

Between playing the drums, playing the guitar and singing, drumming offers the most strenuous workout in the game. He used his own large Sony TV to play while a room full of whooping friends watched his progress on a projector screen in the theater room of The Castilian dormitory, where he is a resident assistant.

“When are you going to let someone else play?” a fan jeered.

Fry’s Home Electronics software department manager David Ramazani, who served as the testifying video-game expert, endured all seven hours of “Rock Band 2” with a grin and said he was excited to see Smith beat the previous record.

“He’s probably the best ‘Rock Band’ player in general I’ve seen,” Ramazani said. “I don’t know anyone even remotely close as good at drums as he is, and I know a lot of ‘Rock Band’ players.”

Smith said his parents and Castilian residents supported him throughout his months of preparation.

“Pretty much my entire floor has been rooting me on; I’ll practice, and all of my residents will come in and support me,” Smith said. “My parents didn’t really support playing video games, but they support getting world records. They’re kind of in a weird position, I guess.”

With only a few songs left to play, he said he could not feel his pedal-side foot and that he was playing through the pain and letting his body go through the motions. He stood up, stretched and sprinted between songs toward a nearby water fountain.

“For a while, I did long stints where I played for four hours at a time on the weekends, just to see if I could physically do it,” he said.

Human development junior Sarah Sorce said she was able to watch Smith practice before he attempted to break the record.

“As he practiced and practiced and practiced, he got more and more points, and he could get a higher percentage on each song,” Sorce said. “If he met a goal, he’d make a new one, and he would keep on going and going. It was awesome to watch.”

Guinness World Records will inform Smith if his attempt was accepted for the Guinness World Records in four to six weeks.

When the sun rises over the Gulf of Mexico in the morning, the rhesus macaque resumes his search for others of his own kind, cutting his way through the urban jungle of swimming pools and pastel condos, dodging paparazzi camera flashes and trackers’ tranquilizer darts.

He’s likely an exile from a troupe of wild monkeys living in Silver Springs, who are believed to be the descendants of escaped extras used in the 1930s “Tarzan” films. His decision to challenge the mating rights of an older male likely first got him the royal smackdown, then the boot out of the community.

The Mystery Monkey has become a celebrity fugitive, a furry reincarnation of John Dillinger. Snapshots are rare, sightings unreliable. Though many people are rooting for him to avoid capture, some are ready to put a bullet between his eyes.

He was first spotted in January 2009 in the small town of Hudson, roughly 100 miles from Silver Springs. From there he’s ping-ponged across Tampa Bay, covering about another 80 miles from Clearwater to Hillsborough County, then back up to Palm Harbor and down to the southern tip of St. Petersburg. His most recent sighting was last week in St. Petersburg.

Monkey fans around the world have been cheering on MM, as he is known to his 60,000-plus Facebook followers, each time he eludes his would-be captors.

His year-and-a-half run from captivity has sparked global attention, and he’s been featured everywhere, from “The Colbert Report” to MSNBC. In addition to the Facebook group, he has a Web site selling T-shirts, as well as a Twitter account. One Tweet on March 9 alluded to a woman in south St. Petersburg who made news for trying to feed him some fruit:

“bitch chased me with a banana today, she’s lucky I didn’t turn around and let her have it between the eyes, we all know what ‘it’ is don’t we”

People from Florida to Belgium to South Korea follow the monkey’s adventures regularly. To them, he is the embodiment of freedom. His Facebook page features many fan photos, including one of a revolution-style fist clenching a banana, with the caption “POWER TO THE MONKEY.”

Elusive

Every celebrity has his demons, and MM’s are fame and drugs. He’s been shot more than a dozen times with the tranquilizer drug Ketamine, street name “Special K.” His trackers, veterinarian Don Woodman and Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation director Vernon Yates, have now switched to Telazol, a faster-acting drug they hope will have more of an impact. They’ve loaded him up with enough Ketamine to bring down a chimpanzee, an animal that weighs five or six times more than the rhesus.

“We could have been hitting it with holy water for all the good it did,” Woodman said.
The Special K has had little effect on the monkey, probably because of the power of his own adrenaline, Woodman said — easy to believe when the little guy has been trapped on a rooftop with trackers one way, paparazzi the other and a helicopter above him. That particular day, MM was running across apartment complex rooftops between Woodman and Yates as they both tried to flush him toward the other. But the public presence was so oppressive that Woodman was afraid they might “dart down a kid” in their attempts to capture him.

“It becomes quite a circus,” Woodman said.

Fueled by his own terror, the rogue primate escaped to a place where he probably slept off the effects of the drug. Confined to the ground, his trackers couldn’t keep up with him.

“He can scale a three-story building like Spider-Man,” Woodman said.

In the wild

The monkey’s getaways are always met with cheers from his Facebook fans, who leave hundreds of comments on his profile daily:

“Keep evading the Suckas!”

“go my little friend go!”

“Monkey, you’re my new hero!”

MM’s trackers think his celebrity status is funny but only to an extent. Woodman believes people, ignorant of the brutal reality of nature, often romanticize the idea of animals and freedom.

“Wild animals have hard, hard lives,” he said. “They don’t live as long. They die hard deaths.”

Florida’s lone-ranging fugitive is looking for other monkeys in a region full of people, far away from his species’ native land in eastern Europe and Asia.

“He’s a social animal,” Woodman said. “He’s roaming around desperately looking for companions and there are none to be found.”

All of the love from MM’s fans is unrequited. Yates doesn’t believe the monkey was ever a pet because he avoids humans. Frankly, he wants to be left alone. Though he shies away from people, he wouldn’t hesitate to use his incisors if he were cornered. Monkeys can also carry diseases like herpes B, which Woodman said essentially “melts your brain.”

Yates said the monkey’s “street smarts” are another indicator that he’s not a house pet. Out of about a hundred monkeys Yates has pursued, MM is the brightest, and he gets sharper by the day. He avoids power lines, and witnesses have observed him looking both ways before crossing a street, things he learned from his rhesus family.

“The troupe told him, ‘No goofy, you wait here. You don’t dart in front of cars because that’s how Uncle Joe got smashed,’” Yates said.

The fugitive also avoids humans now because of their association with pain. He recognizes Yates on sight, immediately screaming and fleeing. The sting from the tracker’s darts has stayed with him. The general public is more dangerous, but the monkey’s fame might be his savior. On Woodman’s second time out tracking him, he heard a police officer whisper, “If it weren’t for the cameras, we could shoot it with a 22 rifle and be done with it.”

“A couple days after that it got its Facebook account, so it’s been sneaking to the library to use the computer, I guess,” Woodman said.

Ultimately, the two trackers are in a no-win situation. If they successfully bring MM in, they have ended his status as a symbol of freedom and rebellion. If they don’t, he could be killed by someone else.

“I’ve already met people that said as far as they’re concerned they’d just use a shotgun on him,” Yates said.

MM gets around

The monkey’s nomad habits have kept him out of the trackers’ reach for now. His traveling has baffled his pursuers. Woodman said he thinks the roaming primate must have an account with Yellow Cab.

The renegade animal typically vanishes for several weeks after an encounter with the public, and his extensive travels make his next appearance hard for the trackers to predict.

“The monkey is a smart little guy,” Woodman said. “You do think he’s almost enjoying himself here the way he’s making a mockery out of everyone trying to catch him.”

According to recent Facebook updates, he enjoyed the St. Pete Grand Prix and banana daiquris last week. But taunting his pursuers never gets old.

“Hey, is that a tranquilizer dart in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? gotta go…”

Tom Heinrich, who received a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Ohio State in 2005, is the writer of the documentary, which focuses on Lake Erie’s underground surfing community in Cleveland.

The surfers “have a connection with the water and the waves,” Heinrich said. “They’ll do whatever they can to make that happen.”

That dedication means facing harsh winter weather to catch some worthwhile waves.

“They are out there in 2-3 inches of snow and slush; they are out there surfing in it,” Heinrich said. “They will surf until the lake freezes over … They are kind of oddball people,” he said, laughing.

Heinrich said if the surfers want to surf in Lake Erie, they have no other choice but to face the cold. Waves are the strongest there during the fall and winter months.

“These are conditions that other people wouldn’t be willing to go out in,” Heinrich said. This is a testament to their love of surfing, which he said the documentary captures.

The production crew “tried to decide on what aspect to focus on with this documentary,” Heinrich said. “It really just evolved to be about the people; they are just interesting characters.”

Heinrich said a surfer featured in the documentary works third shift just so he has free time to surf in the morning. Another makes his own surfboards, called No Na Nalu Surfboard Designs. “No Na Nalu” stands for no salt waves.

“They make [surfing] a part of their lifestyle,” Heinrich said.

Heinrich decided to feature the surfers in a documentary back in 1999 with Scott Ditzenberger, producer and co-director of the film, and Darrin McDonald, co-director and cinematographer. After years of work and planning, the film has received positive recognition at film festivals.

“We’ve got great responses,” Heinrich said. “We’re definitely getting interest.”

At the New York Surf Film Festival, “Out of Place” won Viewer’s Choice for Best Feature. It was also selected to be screened at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where it was well-received by audiences.

The documentary was exposed to hometown viewers in March 2010 during the Cleveland International Film Festival. Heinrich said the theater sold out all three nights the film was scheduled to play. In an effort to accommodate all interested in the film, the theater opened a second room to screen the movie in.

“My favorite part has been the satisfaction knowing people want to see it, knowing that people actually give a damn to go see the film,” Heinrich said.

Heinrich said “Out of Place” is screening strictly at film festivals in effort to create interest in the film. Later in the year, he hopes to get the documentary to theaters in Columbus as a part of a “Great Lakes tour,” he said.

For more information about the documentary, visit outofplacemovie.com.

Poured in a chilled pint glass, the beer develops a substantial, lasting head. As the suds crash against the tongue, a pleasant citrus taste overtakes the mouth.

The packaging complements the beer’s subtle robustness. With three pounds of hops per barrel, a seasoned drinker would expect a more intense flavor profile, but the brewmaster’s skill shines though with a joyous malty finish.  Four hop additions of  Simcoe, Chinook or Cascade result in a delightful medley.

The beer’s smooth taste deceptively masks its hefty alcohol content (6.5% ABV). The New Beer Board’s expert palates could barely detect the hidden hooch, though our reddened cheeks may have shown otherwise.

Overall, the Ranger is a welcome addition to New Belgium’s consistently solid lineup. The Colorado brewery has yet to produce an underwhelming brew, and this one is no exception. It tastes great and is approachable for even the most hop-sensitive imbibers.

Best enjoyed when: You want a strong, tasty beer you can sip on as you watch the sun setting over water.

Best served: In a chilled pint glass poured from a bottle or on draught.

Blue Moon is the go-to label for the semi-discerning drinker—that is, one who would rather avoid Budweiser and Miller Lite. And therein lies Rising Moon’s only saving grace: It’s not Budweiser. Rising Moon’s failure to rise above should come as no surprise as Coors Brewing Company, which owns the Blue Moon brewing company, is more concerned with creating bottle labels that change color than crafting beer.

While Rising Moon could be considered drinkable, it’s definitely not an artisanal brew. It’s not complex or full-bodied. The nose is almost non-existent and the head is weak. Rising Moon hits the palate with a hint of lime, but beyond the citrus influence, the beer lacks depth and leaves a disappointing skuz on the tongue. Perhaps the beer would be refreshing on a hot day (caused by the fact that it mimics water and water is refreshing), but we here at the Beer Board prefer not to spend our hard earned money on beer that emulates water.  Even the beer’s light amber color resembles water more so than beer.

For those drinkers looking for a beer that goes down easy, doesn’t challenge the pallet and doesn’t leave you wanting more, Rising Moon is a decent option, especially if it’s on special. Our two-bottle rating places Rising Moon just above Budweiser, but well below quality.

Best enjoyed when: When the Terrace is out of Spotted Cow…

Best served: Ice cold. Pint glass is optional.

Rating: 2/5 Beers