Kansan Article #3: The Pointlessness of Flyers

Here's my last published article for this year, folks! Enjoy!

Fliers are as much a part of campus life as cramming for tests and 3 a.m. fire alarms. When they’re pinned up on bulletin boards or featured on Web sites, they don’t really cause a problem. It is only when they are passed out to students on campus that there are problems.

Some students just ignore the fliers and walk past the advertisers, often creating awkward situations for both parties. Some take them only to throw them away shortly thereafter. Campus is littered daily with discarded fliers and inserts and someone has to pick them all up.

Doug Riat, University of Kansas Facilities Operations Director, said that fliers are a hassle for his crews to pick up every day. Advertising inserts in the Kansan are to blame as well. His employees have a daily routine of picking up fliers and Kansan inserts, which he says are mainly dropped by students on accident, flying out of the paper when it’s picked up.

Fliers are useless. Handing someone a piece of paper on campus creates the same effect as tossing a bunch on the ground. Sure people have a Constitutional right to free speech — which is why you’re reading this right now. People also have a right and a duty to help keep our environment clean.

If you want people to actually read your ads and not just litter, then post a few on bulletin boards next to the other things that students are selling. When students want a cheap car or stereo or want to know about upcoming events, they look at the bulletin boards. If you really want to advertise something, put it in the classifieds.

Even consider Facebook fliers, eBay, Cars.com, Craig’s List, and the myriad advertising Web sites out there. The people who visit these Web sites are looking for something specific, so they really care about what you’re selling.

The sheer amount of traffic generated by those websites is amazing. According to statbrain.com, Facebook gets around 4.5 million hits per day, Cars.com gets 1.5 million, Craig’s List gets 5.6 million, and eBay gets a jaw-dropping 8.6 million.

The litter and annoyance created by fliers isn’t worth the possible effect of changing someone’s thinking. Especially when there are such great online opportunities.

But inevitably, fliers will continue to litter our campus. When someone hands you a flier, don’t just throw it on the ground. Consider reading the flier and then throw it away in a nearby trash can or recycling bin. Don’t use the excuse that you couldn’t find one. Trash cans on this campus are as innumerable as filled parking spaces. You’ll save the maintenance crews a lot of work by just recycling the fliers, or better yet, by not handing any out at all. Go for eBay.

Photo #29

The weird snakey bridge thing at Millenium Park in Chicago.

Kansan Article #2: The Stupidness of Celebrity Worship

Here's my second article published in the UDK. My third one got bumped from this Friday's paper, so it will be up on here next week sometime. Enjoy!

I know everyone’s sick of hearing about Anna Nicole Smith and her babies and her old dead husbands. I roll my eyes and growl at Court TV and CNN whenever her name pops up. Forgive me if I’m adding to the noise.

I hope my noise is different sounding.

Some students are obsessed with other people’s lives. These kinds of students (who love the gossip magazines and things like that) aren’t satisfied with just living his/her own life and being concerned with actual people and events that affect the world. Instead, our society is obsessed with knowing what kind of purse so-and-so has. Real life is taking a back seat to fantasy.

Sure, watching the “E!” channel and picking up the gossip rags in the grocery store checkout line may seem harmless, but it hides something deeper, something darker. Because these “celebrity-chasing” students don’t care about their own lives, they are causing two terrible things to happen.

First, they are forcing the journalism world to cover worthless stories like what party Kanye West attended. Journalists are supposed to seek the truth and report it. Celebrity-chasers are forcing journalists to seek out information about celebrities that very well may be true, but not important in the least bit. The important truth is things like the genocide going on in Darfur and what the city council decided at its last meeting. The important truth is things like why China wants to get rid of Starbucks and why John Doe opened up that new deli down the street. The important truth is not what kind of shampoo Jessica Simpson uses.

Secondly, celebrity-chasers are forcing themselves to disconnect with the very world they live in. The AP wire on any given day has three or four headlines about problems in the Middle-East and other news, and then is filled with stories of this party and that DUI. Celebrity-chasers, by being interested in every little thing that celebrities do, are making themselves dumber. These students don’t pay attention to the real news, the news that actually affects the way they live. They live a fantasy life vicariously. They live their lives through the lives of celebrities.

Students need to wake up. We shouldn’t care about the mundane details of people we’ll never meet. We need to care about the events that affect our world. We need to pay attention to what businesses are doing well, what the situation in Iraq is like, and what we as citizens can do about the problems in our world. Sure, those famous people provide us with entertainment, but that’s what iTunes and the movie theaters are for. Let’s not let celebrities distract us from the importance of living in this crazy world.

Instead of watching Laguna Beach and E! in all your free time, watch CNN in the mornings to get the headlines. As you go to lunch or class, pick up the Kansan or one of the four free papers available for students (The New York Times, The Kansas City Star, The Lawrence Journal-World, and USA Today). If we start getting connected to the world, we will know more about our surroundings and therefore be able to affect the world around us for the better.

Photo #28

Part of the Chicago Skyline via the Bean

Kansan Article #1: The Snootiness Of Apple

First in a series of my three articles published in the University Daily Kansan:

If people from the 1950s saw a picture of a modern-day crowd, they would wonder why so many people had pieces of white spaghetti hanging out of their ears. If a modern-day person told them that it was a device for listening to days of music made by a company named after a fruit, the people would most likely think the modern person was insane. Apple has infiltrated our society with the Mac, the iPod, and now even the iPhone. Apple also has a reputation for being the snooty members of the technology world, with its iPod-only music format and its fancy Apple-exclusive stores. When all other big companies like Microsoft, Sony, and Panasonic unveil new electronic gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Apple has Macworld in San Francisco, its own conference for all things Apple, and incidentally held at the same exact time.

Since Apple has gone from computers to music to phones, and since it has quite the ego, it’s only a matter of time before the company starts branching out. Here are some products to expect in the next few years.

The iPillow! It comes in six different colors, all bearing the Apple logo in the center. It also, of course, works with your iPod so you can listen to music as you sleep. It will also work with your iPhone, so you don’t have to even move to be awakened by the phone. Since it is an Apple product, and since Apple is notorious for having its products only work with other Apple products, it won’t work with Microsoft-related positions like sleeping on your back or stomach. You will have to sleep in the Apple-copyrighted/protected position on your side. One night’s sleep will only cost 99 cents.

Next up is the iLaundrybasket. It has the standard sleek white and silver finish, with the Apple logo on the bottom, of course. The regular version will hold about 700 socks, but if you buy the bigger version, it can hold up to 10,000 socks. It also works with your iPod and iPhone, of course, so you can listen to music and take phone calls as you are carrying your laundry. It will not be compatible with any clothes bought at Wal-Mart, Target, any thrift stores, or Old Navy, however. After all, it is an Apple product. It has to look good.

The iBookbag is next. The six different colors are standard, of course. The standard version will hold about 1000 books, and the expanded version will hold up to 20000. But the bag will only carry Apple-endorsed books designed on Apple computers and written by iPod or iPhone-owning professors and professionals. The bag will come with wireless headphones (white, of course) and a microphone, so you can talk to people on the iPhone discreetly while looking like a crazy person to the rest of the world. But of course, since it’s Apple, it would be cool. Not crazy.

On the smaller end of the scale is the amazing iPencil. The pencil will only come in the classic white and silver finish and will have a writing life of up to one month for consistent users. The iPencil will only write on the also up-and-coming iPaper (available only at Apple stores) which will only cost 99 cents per sheet.

These products might be a little hard to find in stores. If Apple wants to continue its amazing sales, it will probably have to end up embracing the other members of the technology world. They will have to go to the same conferences (gasp!) and even make their products compatible with other brands of electronics. In fact, Apple’s computers now run Microsoft Office software, so it is only a matter of time before Apple has to come down from its pedestal to mingle with the commoners in the other aspects of the technology world. The only problem is that Apple is far too snooty to mingle unless money is on the line.

A flicker of light at the end? Or just my head...

I've been noticing that things are maybe....just maybe...winding down here. I am getting more and more papers and projects that are due in the next few weeks, which in turn will spill out into finals.
Almost halfway done! Woo!
I'm going to turn in my final Kansan piece tomorrow. Once that gets published on Friday, I'll be putting all three of them (I know, big number) up on here for you all to read.
I also just bought some groceries tonight. Twas a glorious occasion. Soup in a can, peanut butter and jelly ingredients, crackers, and the ever-craved OJ. I shall eat well and not be mooching off my roomies for a while.
For those of you who don't know, I'll be living in the sort-of apartments on campus next year called the Towers. I just know I'll be in Tower C, and I know one of the three other guys from Navs. That's about all I know for now.
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Moving on to some current events stuff:
I was watching something on the ABC podcast, and someone was interviewing somebody else about the VTech shooting yesterday. Whoever was asking the questions was asking, in a very accusatory tone, why campus wasn't locked down and why there was so little security around the campus.
Allow me to answer.
It's a campus. If you put a wall and metal detectors around a campus, it become a prison or something. A campus is supposed to be open. That's one of the main reasons I didn't go to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. That campus is not open at all.
As for the lockdown thing...good grief people. It's a college campus, not a high school (which they still have problems "locking down.") These news idiots filling the day with the same loop of information cuz they can't find any more available news ot report need to stop and think about the questions they're asking.
Alrighty. That's just my two cents.
Back to the fun fun polysci paper due on thursday. If you all want to know, it's about what the United States role should be in internati----
...................................................................
And everyone fell asleep.

What a week....

It seems like everything is due this week and next week. I had a journalism project due on Friday, which I barely finished on time. I also had an opinion piece due for the Kansan, which I finished a half-hour past deadline (my editor said it was okay. whew!) I had to read a really interesting book called "With The Old Breed" by a guy named E.B. Sledge. It's a memoir of a guy who fought in WWII in the Pacific. It was really interesting, but the fact that I had to read it so fast made it somewhat less enjoyable.
For next week, I have story proposals for my final journalism project, a newsroom shift (where I have to go either film or audio tape something for TV/radio stations on campus), a book report, and a polysci paper due.
I think it'll let up for a while after next thursday, thankfully.
A few more weeks and it'll all be over.

Photo #27

Chicago and the Bean

Enrolled!

I have enrolled for the fifth time here at KU, and for the first time without Russian. Time certainly flies when you grow up.
Here's what I'm taking:
Multimedia Editing: no idea what this is. I was supposed to take it with my multimedia reporting this semester, but it interfered with Russian.

Photojournalism: I wanted to take it this year, but Russian interfered.

Intro to Political Theory: Sounds boring, I know. I think it looks kinda interesting, and then I'll be done with all my Polysci courses.

Western Civ: A class that basically every student has to take at KU. Heard it's easy, heard it's hard. Guess I'll find out soon enough!

Child Psychology: so I can have some semblance of a clue when/if I have kids.

I'm also technically enrolled in an internship class, even though the internship is for the first four weeks of the summer and then I'm done.

Photo #26

My Family via The Bean in Millennium Park!

Yeah.

I realize it's been...well...forever. It's been a crazy busy couple of months. I won't go into full details, but I had plenty of things distracting me from the ol' blog.
But now, hopefully, I'm back!

Let's see...what have you all missed....

I bought a brand-new camera with some Christmas money! It's an Olympus E-330, and it's pretty sweet. It's a digital SLR, which means it has every feature a 35mm film camera has, and then some. I can change the lenses on it and all that kind of stuff. When my family and I went to Chicago for spring break, it got quite a testing. I took around 300 pictures with it...yikes! It is a lot of fun to play with.

I turned 20 on March 26th! I am now no longer a teenager! For the first time in a while, my birthday didn't actually fall on spring break week, so my family and I celebrated my birthday in Minnesota a few days before. I got some awesome gifts, including a wireless remote for my camera, some great CDs, and a card to join the Apple cult (in other words, an iPod).

School's been amazingly busy. I'm in my last semester of Russian, so things are finally winding down for that. The journalism class I'm taking is an unbelievable amount of work. I have had to 4 or 5 big stories (which is always more work than it sounds like). The links to all those can be found down below, along with some pictures and other fun stuff.

Well...I will definitely be trying to keep up with this thing now that someone has requested it (mom).
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Here's some links:
My J415 work: http://reporting.journalism.ku.edu/spring07/kuhr-volek/caleb_sommerville/
1st set of Chicago Pictures: http://ku.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2126984&l=f219d&id=16822725
2nd set of Chicago Pictures: http://ku.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2127958&l=c4b5c&id=16822725
First Pictures with new camera: http://ku.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2121264&l=ee3e8&id=16822725
ManMaker Conference Pictures: http://ku.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2123278&id=16822725
Trash Smash (a game at ManMaker) Pictures: http://ku.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2123282&id=16822725