Welcome to another discussion about the potential dystopian fate of the U.S. Last week, we discussed how the nation combines elements of a Huxleyan and Orwellian dystopia — a mix of gratification and censorship. This is all completely hypothetical, of course,
Walking through this city, one notices quite a few places of business that, more than any others, scream “Gainesville.” Satchel’s Pizza, Maude’s Cafe and the Hippodrome State Theatre are among the most well-known of these hyper-local joints. Though much of the city is structured around UF, if you want to get a look at the real Gainesville, you need to step beyond the comforts of campus and frequent the wide array of small, local businesses Gainesville has to offer. Sure, we’re no big city like Atlanta or San Francisco, but there is a unique flavor to Gainesville — a combination of small-town America and big-name campus — and the businesses and events that make it a one-of-a-kind city.
When I was a kid, listening to music was an escape from the mundane. There was nothing I loved more than sitting in the back seat for a long drive with my headphones on. I found myself moved by catchy melodies and guitars. I loved rock ‘n’ roll so much, I wanted to play the guitar myself. My dad bought me a small, no-name nylon-string acoustic at the guitar shop where I signed up to take weekly lessons. The first time I picked up that cheap instrument, I was disappointed to learn that playing the guitar wasn’t something I could do naturally. I didn’t understand how the thing worked. Once I started taking lessons, I found that practicing was boring and painful.
Like fish that don’t know they’re in water, we don’t often think about how the structure of our world shapes our behavior. This week I’d like to take a look at how capitalism affects the way we measure value. To do that, we’ll first travel to the art world.
Martin Luther King Jr., the 1963 March on Washington, “I have a dream”: We’re all familiar with the story. Every third Monday in January, we observe and honor the man who fought racism and paved the way for civil rights — at least, this is what most can say about him. It’s not a bad description, by any means. It’s quite beautiful, actually. The thing is, that tweet-length description of King’s legacy is incomplete. Grossly incomplete. King wasn’t simply this saintly fi gure we’ve come to martyrize: the “Santa Claus-ifi cation” of King, as renowned social-justice activist Cornel West describes. Close your eyes for a minute and conjure your image of King. You’ll likely imagine that August day when King stood before hundreds of thousands of people and told the world about his dream: one of the greatest moments in our country’s history,
Students of UF and Gainesville residents: I have something to reveal to you. It’s something I’ve spent a lot of time refl ecting on, and it’s something I’ve only spoken of to a few close friends. It’s rather personal, so I hope I don’t make you too uncomfortable when I come clean. I made a realization over Winter Break; people who cared about me confronted me and made clear that I needed to look within myself if I was ever going to be content. I need to be open about this. I am an automaton. I’m not quite a robot in the traditional sense, but I’m far from a golem. The word robot usually implies advanced machinery or complicated electronics. In reality, I’m steam-powered, and there are fewer ones and zeros and more levers and gears. That’s not to say I’m not relatable. I’m just like any other student, despite my leadfi lled veins and spring-loaded spinal cord. I love taking walks around campus. I love Century Tower; there’s one bell in particu
As college students, we think we’re immortal. Not in the “guzzles-a-four-pack-of-Red-Bull-and-jumps-of-a-roof” type of way, though. Of course, those people are out there. We think we’re immortal because of how far we plan ahead. We pick our majors with a rough idea of what we want to do with our lives. We have an idea of where we want to live and what industry we want to work in, for the most part. By the time we reach our last academic year, we more or less have an outline of the exact job we’re going to get and how we’re going to get it. We think we’re immortal because we are assuming nothing happens to us before we get there.
Being a new columnist, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to tell all you readers about me — and I don’t plan on it. There is some pleasure to the cognitive dissecting of another person’s psyche through their writing, and to those of you who read daily, I hope you’re able to discern who I am as a person by my writing. However, I’m going to completely contradict my beliefs by telling you of two things I love: sports and politics.
I’m writing in response to the Jan. 5 article published in the Alligator called, “Binge Drinking Game: Syllabus week edition.” I am a health-promotion specialist at GatorWell. It is disappointing a story would be published the first week of Spring classes focused on encouraging unsafe and unhealthy behaviors among the Gator Nation. While I acknowledge freedom of the press and the Alligator’s right to write and publish stories as they choose, encouraging students — especially those underage — not only to drink alcohol to excess, but to do so to the detriment of their academic success is irresponsible and dangerous.
Late in the evening of Nov. 8 of last year, a wildly entertaining electoral battle was fought before all Americans. But what was just as entertaining was reading and hearing the massive outpour of emotions and intense reactions from our country’s entertainers and artists. Think about your favorite actor or musical artist for a moment. Then, check their Twitter feed. There is a very high probability if you scroll down to early November, you’ll see some sort of election reaction, which was almost unanimously negative.
It’s Friday the 13th, and you know what that means — avoid all cracks, don’t walk under any ladders and turn around when the hoard of black cats crosses your path. It’s time to stock up on four-leaf clovers and rabbit feet (or whatever the vegan alternative to rabbit feet is) and toss salt over your shoulder. But if you’re running away from a man in a hockey mask, make sure to flip your newspaper open and prepare yourself for the Friday the 13th edition of...
The wafting stench of cigarettes and sounds of jazz greeted me as I stepped off the plane and into the airport terminal in Kenner, Louisiana, just outside of New Orleans.
Last week, we published an editorial discussing reasons why a hypothetical dystopian fate of the U.S. was more similar to a Huxleyan dystopia (massive inputs of meaningless information that detract from important news; control by desire and pleasure) instead of the typical Orwellian one (censored media; control by fear). This week, we’re going to re- evaluate that claim and amend it slightly.
What does it mean to be “smart?” When someone recalls obscure facts or demonstrates a remarkable feat of calculation, we say that person is smart. If someone demonstrates an unusual perspective, drawing from many sources to reach a conclusion, we may wonder how they are able to perform such mental gymnastics.
Truth is an elusive and abstract concept. Maybe Pontius Pilate understood it best when he looked at Jesus and asked, “What is truth?” This past year has been an echo of that question. Last year was a time of ineffable emotion, like that of a disgruntled spouse who has bottled up her marital frustration for years. It was only natural that democratic decisions — Brexit, Trump — would be made in order to spite the political establishment. It was the year that statistics, journalism and facts were cast down from their thrones. The populace no longer looks to news in search of truth. Rather, we understand every news outlet to have a predisposed bias or slant, so we abandon the notion of finding objective truths.
For the past decade or so, fans of science fiction have been pegged as a specific type of person — picture the central cast of “The Big Bang Theory.” Though attributing science fiction to the stereotypical pasty, white male nerd may seem like a long-standing tradition, it is interesting to note that this has never been an accurate depiction of science fiction fans. In fact, much of the sci-fi culture we see today — conventions, fan fiction, online forums — was sparked by female fans. It’s sad though; whatever it was exactly that designated science fiction the genre of the intelligent, white man ignored a history of diversity and progress in fiction far beyond that of other genres. It’s sad to see science fiction reduced to such a small demographic, considering its past and the actual origins of the phenomenon of a fan base.
There is a lot to be said about the choice to remain blissfully ignorant, especially in regard to things we cannot change — like genetics. Having watched the science fiction film “Gattaca” on a slow day in my high school biology class with its depictions of a futuristic society driven by genetic discrimination, I am all too aware of the dangers of knowing too much about your genetic profile. So when my parents bought me the 23andMe ‘Health + Ancestry’ kit to find out more about our family’s ancestral background, I felt an unsettling mixture of anticipation and apprehension as I shipped my test tube of spit off to a California lab.
With Inauguration Day just around the corner, I feel appropriate in bringing up the harsh reality of the most recent election — a reality the losers love to force into our ears, and the winners wish we’d all forget: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2 million votes. If Clinton won by such a large number, then how did President-elect Donald Trump secure the most desired seat in American politics? You already know the answer: the Electoral College. The Electoral College is like the ice cream machine at McDonald’s: Everyone knows it’s broken, but no one can tell you why or how to fix it, so we all just roll with it. I’m so tired of rolling with something that is confusing, ancient and ruining our country by disproportionately making some votes count less than others. Before you get heated and throw the Opinions section to the ground, just hear me out. Unlike McDonald’s, we can’t take our business to a real restaurant, keeping this presidential to keep it simple), and it’s the fate of our country. Why was the Electoral College first created? Well, two reasons: The first, because our Founding Fathers feared a presidential candidate could get tyrannical by swaying public opinion — which ironically enough is what the presidential campaign has become: a battle between people, not policy. Electors were created to select someone fit for the presidency because the Founding Fathers didn’t believe the population could ever make the right choice. The second, more important reason is because the Founding Fathers didn’t want campaigners to focus solely on the more populous states. They dictated that regardless of population, all states were given three electoral votes to begin with. To understand this, you need to know what’s going on with electoral votes in the first place — please read slowly; it’s about to get wild. The Electoral College is given electoral votes by the total number of representatives in Congress. This is summated from the 100 seats in the Senate — an unchanging number — and the currently held 435 seats in the House of Representatives — which is based on population. That gives us 535 total electoral votes. These votes are then supposedly distributed evenly among the population of the entire U.S. (approximately 324,118,787/ 535 = 605,829) meaning a single electoral vote is given per 605,829 people in the state. If you remember from earlier, the Founding Fathers dictated each state must receive three electoral votes out of the total 535 before considering their population. This means that people who vote in smaller states have an unfair vote compared to those who vote in larger states, like Florida, which has four fewer electoral votes than it should. This is eerily Orwellian for the U.S.: All votes are equal, but some votes are more equal than others. The Electoral College doesn’t even do the most important job it was designed to do. The smaller states always fall in favor of Republicans, so they’re rarely given attention by Democrats. California almost always votes Democrat, so Republicans rarely campaign there. You get the point. Campaigners typically push for four paramount swing states: Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and they just skip the small states or go there once to smile and wave. This wouldn’t be a problem if our system wasn’t also winner-take-all: If you win the slightest majority of 50.1 percent, then you get all the electoral votes of a state, excluding Maine and Nebraska. If you do the math, a candidate can win all the small states by 50.1 percent, win the electoral vote by 50.19 percent and lose the popular vote with only 22 percent secured. We should not have a system that allows for the possibility of anyone winning the presidency by only securing 22 percent of all the people who vote. And that is why the Electoral College is wack.
Let’s talk about Liberals — capital L — in the way people like Tomi Lahren and Bill O’Reilly refer to them. Perhaps the most common critique of Liberals is how overly sensitive they are, clamoring for political correctness and safe spaces. We’re familiar with Brown University’s backlash for having a ‘safe space’ full of coloring books and bubbles after a campus debate on rape culture, and conversely, the uproar following the University of Chicago’s decision to release an email saying they were not in favor of trigger warnings and safe spaces. But we’re not here to debate the validity of these safe spaces. We’re going to analyze the claim that conservatives keep going back to — that Liberals are awful because they are oversensitive — and refute it with one, big counterpoint: our current President- elect, Donald Trump.
Solutions by The State News
