Rap Game is Hurtin

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Biggie Biggie Biggie, the Rap Game Needs You!

http://primarypropaganda.blogspot.com/2008/05/rap-game-bad-sequin-vest.html

Singers let themselves be heard at COSA

Singers are no stranger to the stage, and the platform at COSA is a perfect stage to present their passion for all to see and hear. The Celebration of Student Achievement is a venue where students of all majors have a chance to make a presentation on topics in their field of study, or present something they feel the UC community may enjoy. Click here for the full COSA definition, and last year’s schedule of events.
Naturally, the B-Naturals, UC’s female a cappella group, will be making another performance this year, and veteran Kyli Kauth will be participating with them. Kauth joined the a cappella group her freshman year with her roommate, and have been actively singing since then. The two decided to join the group for the simple reason of, “We love to sing.” Kauth explains the group as, “They are a female a cappella group who sing for fun…We’re just a group of girls who love to sing.”
In the past, the B-Naturals have performed songs such as Elton John's "Can you feel the love tonight," as well as the Rembrandt's "Friends theme," and Soul's "You are the new day." This year the group will sing, "One of the fires four."
The B- Naturals will perform again this year. Kauth wasn’t happy with past year performance because of the time they were scheduled, this year she believes they are scheduled around noon. This year is better because, “It is not 8 am, and it’s not freezing cold.” Having the early slot and cold weather was something she believed to take away from people hearing how well these ladies sing.
For this year though, Kauth suggests to come out, “If you do not want to join, come out and support us … a crowd is nice…” Also planned for this year is a duet with the male a cappella group on campus, The Bearitones. The Bearitones are also presenting at COSA, and member Patrick Wigfall is presenting something of his own as well. Patrick Wigfall is a senior at Ursinus, but it seems as though singing may not be the only thing on his agenda. Growing up, Patrick juggled several activities such as football, track, and singing to name a few. When he got to Ursinus, participating in numerous activities at once was not so easy and he was forced to make a tough decision.
The outcome? Patrick decided to take some time from track and football to focus on other things. “It was so much of a commitment here, and I wanted to be involved with other things on campus.” A member of the Bearitones since 2004, which is only the second year it existed, he was now able to commit himself fully to his love for singing. But, when ideas of a COSA presentation began formulating


in his head, Patrick was now able to reminisce back to his love for the lush green football field. He could have chosen to present on any topic, but this business major decided to explore the failure of NFL Europe. NFL Europe is a minor football league located across Europe and he was curious as to why minor leagues in America are successful, but this one flopped, while losing an average of $30 million per season.
Patrick concludes that, “The culture of the sport is American made, people over there weren’t interested in seeing a watered down version of the sport, they want to see the real American National Football League.”
Whether you are a singer, business major, sorority girl, or football player, there is always something enjoyable at COSA.

Drivers Beware !

Be careful Ursinus College, or you may be the next victim. There is a trap set here on campus. Like any good hunter’s snare, this one is not easily seen and many have felt the wrath of it. If you “step” into this trap, you may be shaken down for 25 dollars.

No, there is no bully wandering around campus demanding 25 dollars, but there is indeed a trap that has been pilfering money, and feeding the beast we all know as Campus Safety. Unlike verbal taunts or kick balls to the face, this bully is known to get their “kicks” from inattentive drivers in the Ritter parking lot

This trap is set right as one would enter the Ritter parking lot, closest line of spots to New Hall, excluding the handicapped spots. Pictured below, there is a small section there that can comfortably hold tow cars, but wait!? There are no white lines. Every couple days, this trap claims another victim, and 25 more dollars goes to the school.

There are a total of 1,265 total spots on campus, so what is another two more? Last year Campus Safety handed out six-hundred and fifty tickets were handed out. How many are from the Ritter spot aforementioned? Kim Taylor says, “We don’t track that info, but I will guess (the majority of tickets) are from parking in faculty/staff or no registration.”


What bothers some students, more specifically Daryl Downs, UC junior, is the logic behind this spot. Students such as Downs have fallen victim to this trap, and wonder why these specific spots are “off limits.” Downs asks, “Why can’t we just park there? It isn’t in the way of anything . . . It is like they just ran out of white paint and stopped there.”


25 dollars seems to be the going rate on college campuses across Pennsylvania. Parking in a faculty spot with a student registration, and parking improperly in a parking area. For a full listing of the violations and charges, click here to the UC Campus Safety homepage.

It seems no matter where one goes, space is always an issue. Andy Knerr, Lehigh University Junior, keeps his 84’ Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera on campus and would explain the parking situations there as, “Unfair, and inconvenient.” At Lehigh, parking is controlled by both the town of Bethlehem and the Lehigh campus. By the academic buildings Knerr explains, “There is really no open parking, its all staff parking that gets unused … and if we park there it costs 25 dollars or so.” So what do kids do when they drive to class and there are no spots left? They do what many UC students do, “… park somewhere where we aren’t supposed to and hope not to get a ticket.”

Students are not the only ones that have issues with parking. One teacher has been rumored to call campus safety on student who park in the faculty spots. The teacher was reluctant to say, but did admit to calling campus safety on student parking in the faculty spots.
If one feels the need to play Campus Safety officer, there is one site that could make your dreams come true. Click here and feel free to pass out gag parking tickets to your friends… or enemies.

Do it !!!!!! You won't !

Money can make guys do some crazy things. Funniest part is that guys are willing to become cheap Johnny Knoxville/Bam Margera knockoffs for small amounts. Since Ursinus is taking 40k from our pockets (or parents') each year, students seem to jump at the opportunity to get some of that back with every small bill they can get their hands on.
But what really makes them do it? Is it pure boredom? Peer pressure? Do kids really need the money? Or are they just doing it for jollies to add some excitement to the daily tear of of being a student with the possibility of becoming an online celeb? With YouTube and Facebook movie applications out there, it isn't uncommon to see cinnamon eaters and Jackass wannabe's

Stephen Tomczuk, UC alum 06' thinks many kids do these things out of peer pressure. He confesses, "It's all about the peer pressure, I always thought it was complete bull when teachers would say don't give in to peer pressure and don't do drugs. But if enough people are telling you to do something. . . most people will do almost anything." The reason he feels this way, is because peer pressure (along with a nice chunk of money) once made him do something many would cringe at.

Stephen introduced me to what a Jersey turnpike shot was. For those who don’t know, a jersey turnpike shot is defined by Stephen as, “It’s when they (Bartenders) drain the mats on the inside ledge of the bar that they make the drinks over into a glass, it’s a combination of every drink made that night. He continued, “Because it was (for) $150, they wiped up the bar and rang out the rag into the cup. . . . . it was like 2-4 shots worth, and tasted like apple juice.”
The responsible Noelle Bisinger, UC senior and Psych major adds, "Money and peer pressure combined can make stunts much more tempting but do not make it impossible to say no to a dare or stunt." But sometimes saying no just isn't manly.

Jeffrey Schloth,(04-06 UC student), was challenged to eat a [stink bug for 5 dollars. "I mostly did it because I was challenged with the infamous "you won't phrase" .. . The money went towards a Wawa hoagie." Can one blame him to do this for a meal? This popular "You won't" phrase has gotten people to do things all the time, including yours truly. Once a person is met with the challenge, it wouldn't be manly to take a step back. The guns have been drawn, and that is your time to fire.

With this in mind I scoured the campus and asked college students, alumni, and faculty things they would do for money. Click here for the full survey results.

I leave you with the always eloquent words of Harry Keyser, UC senior. " Money talks my man. The dollar sign might as well be a religious symbol." Keyser was once dared to eat 2 triple cheese burgers from Wendy's along with fries and a drink for $50, and failed. Isn't it amazing what people will do for some money?

Let those Cameras Roll !!!!

All of us can make the world a better place if we all take Bob Saget’s advice from “American Funniest Home Videos” and keep those camera’s rolling, because as off recently, the police have been the stars on TV, receiving anything but $10,000 for having the best video clip. Sadly these videos are neither funny nor worth joking about.
Camera’s have caught a lot of exciting material over the years ranging from hilarious crotch shots, to elephants humping rhinos and even amateur porn. But the social implications of having people on the street with cameras have done wonders for cleaning up the streets exposing excessively abusive cops because with cops like these, who needs bullies?
In 1991, Rodney King became an icon in an instant. Thanks to the amateur footage from George Holliday, he caught the whole incident on tape. After the video hit the television airwaves, people were up in arms at the LAPD, and change resulted after riots, killings and looting. Brutality was brought to the surface of social problems, and police realized they might indeed get caught on camera.
But is Baltimore the new L.A.? And is Eric Bush the new Rodney King? The newest chapter of brutality comes from the Baltimore harbor. If people didn’t trust the police now, I don’t know what they think after this. This one Baltimore officer in fact puts the “rut” in brutality. Officer Salvatore Rivieri of the Baltimore police was video taped being overly aggressive towards 14 year old Eric Bush. Officer Rivieri was taped was taped putting the child in a choke hold and dragging him to the ground.
But have we judged too soon? UC Campus Safety officer, Gary Hodgeson, thinks that people need to try and understand where Rivieri is coming from. Hodgeson senses Rivieri came from a “Strict Italian family, where rules are rules . . . and the kids he was dealing with are prototypical of the ones I deal with here . . . These kids think they are granted rights they really aren’t, and a police officers job is made more difficult.” He continued, “As the adult, he should have drawn the line and didn’t. He let anger and emotion gets the better of him.”
In a Baltimore Sun, Mayor Sheila Dixon called Rivieri a "bad apple" and the officer was immediately suspended. At the end of the video, Officer Rivieri yelps, “Is that camera on? If I find myself on. . .” What seems to be coming out is a “you” possibly referring to YouTube then the video cuts off . . . How quickly he knew how his own fate was sealed. Why cops still use excessive force in an age where anyone can post videos online at any time, why take the risk? It’s just silly. International cops don’t seem to be getting all this negative attention, why American’s? Maybe the end to Saget’s AFHV’s theme explains it . . . “Oh the funny things you do, America, America, this is you.”

Digital Black Out Sparks International game of Clue

Colonel Mustard, in the Mediterranean, with the boat anchor! There is an international mystery going on in the Middle East, and this may be the time we need a Colonel Mustard or James Bond to get to the bottom of this.
This international game of Clue, has eight main players, and no real lead to who is responsible. The players involved include: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain Pakistan and India.

D.J. Morales of AllHeadlineNews reports,“(Last week) Countries all over the Middle East experienced a disruption in Internet services Wednesday when a communications cable in the Mediterranean Sea was cut for reasons still unknown.” He continues, "This cut has affected Internet services in Egypt with a partial disruption of 70 percent of the network nationwide." What Morales has failed to report, CNN has not. CNN reports that not one, but two main cables were cut.

CNN reports, “The two cables damaged are FLAG Telecom's FLAG Europe-Asia cable and SeaMeWe-4 ( South East Asia Middle East Western Europe), a cable owned by a consortium of more than a dozen telecommunications companies.” Angry bloggers in the Middle East sound off . . . Syrian blogger from the UAE "Dubai Jazz", blames an Egyptian fisherman for the breakdown of Internet communications in the region. He writes: “I couldn't do anything significant during the slow down. I couldn't even post comments on my own blog let alone others. G-mail was also down.YouTube? … Forget about it.” What bothers most people is the dependency of all these countries on undersea cables, and how easily they can be disrupted, or even worse, cut completely. But most developed nations, such as the United States are fairly dependent on the internet as well. In the same CNN article, it reads, “

An official at Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, speaking on condition of anonymity told AP it was believed that a boat's anchor might have caused the problems, although this was unconfirmed.” The results of this disturbance have cost countries such as India millions of dollars and also a million headaches. Both the trading on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in Delhi and the SENSEX exchange in Bombay has been disrupted.


SeaMeWe-4 line

Chaos has also broken out in the UAE. UAE's public and private sectors were also hit hard with the cable outage. This outage also reached the television and telephone lines that also rely on those cables for transmissions overseas.

Wadah Tahah, business strategies and development manager for state-owned construction company EMAAR warned CNN Arabic that, if the outage continued, "such a situation could create problems between brokers, companies, and investors due to loss of control." Coincidently Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon were spared the insanity because these countries traffic their Internet from a different route, and many Middle East governments have back up satellite systems in case of such a failure. Is this a case of International terrorism? Or just a “boat anchor accident?”

Check out a related story at: http://elbrennan.blogspot.com/

Has the Senate gone too far?

As the presidential race heats up and narrows down to 4 candidates, our 535 current members of Congress are dragging their feet on a controversial bill of privacy and security.

This bill better known as FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) originated in 1978, and was amended by Bush and his administration under the Protect America Actin 2007 to " ease restrictions on secret surveillance of alleged terrorist suspects" [1]. This bill grants immunity to all telecommunications companies, giving them the power to share with the government all phone calls, emails, instant messages, and text messages done over their lines, no warrant necessary.

On January 25th, The Philadelphia Inquirerposted a story titled "Senate backs Protections for Telecoms",online informing the public ,“In a 60-36 vote, the Senate rejected a proposal from the Senate Judiciary Committee that did not include immunity for the telecoms."

The ramifications of these warrant-less taps draw up constitutional debates over illegal search and seizure, a right granted to all Americans in the Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." [2]

An ElectronicFrontierFoundation.comblog is making a call for change. On the page, the author states their case by noting,”The Senate should not let the telecoms off the hook. Granting immunity sets a dangerous precedent, sending the message that lawbreaking is acceptable and that the rights of Americans can be freely infringed by private companies in defiance of the law. . . the Senate should let Americans have their day in court.”

Currently this bill has angered many democratic senators, Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt being one. Leahy said in a CBS.com storyin November that, “granting immunity would give the Bush administration a "blank check." He continued, "When we give the government sweeping surveillance powers, there need to be clear rules and checks and balances to prevent abuses against the American people.”

As democrats such as Leahy attempt to rewrite bills, eliminating the immunity clause, republicans such as Bush has threatened a veto if the bill does not include the immunity clause.

Currently the FISA bill was up for extermination in early February. But the republicans fought hard and as CNN reported online Tuesday January 29th,“Congress (Tuesday) passed a 15-day extension of a temporary surveillance law set to expire later this week, buying itself more time to come up with a permanent fix for the measure.”

This gives the democrats a chance to come up with revisions to the bill, and make this bill more favorable in their minds for the American people.

Carla Giampa,Ursinus College senior and politics major is concerned with the current legislation. Giampa expresses that, "Our founding fathers fought the American Revolution and took immense care in drafting a constitution that protected the rights of its citizens from a strong central government. Allowing any government such a power will strip American citizens of the rights the founding fathers fought so hard to preserve."

If you oppose the bill like Carla, let your senators know by calling them or filling out a quick and easy form on the following link. ACT NOW!!!