TN 101 falls short of expectations
April 25, 2012
It seems fitting that now, at the end of my tenure as a columnist for The Daily Beacon, I have finally decided to air just a few of my grievances in the form of an instructive story:
During the past month or so I had heard a lot about the ...
Racial profiling problem persists
April 18, 2012
Though not all of you may have noticed, yesterday the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing called “Ending Racial Profiling in America.” (At the time this article was written, the hearing had not yet been webcast, but some preliminary information was available online). The fact that such a ...
Spare yourself from orange glow
April 11, 2012
Even if for some reason your mind blanked out starting at the end of March (meaning you missed Spring Break here at UT), there’s always one sure-fire way to tell that students have been frolicking about in Florida recently. Yes, friends, take a look around you and you’ll ...
Channel ‘Dear Abby’ to help others
April 04, 2012
After many years spent honing my Internet browsing skills, in the past few months I have discovered my new online passion: Yahoo! Answers. There, I’ve been able to anonymously unleash my inner Dear Abby by answering questions ranging from history and politics to relationships and social science. While I ...
Wastefulness ravages environment
March 28, 2012
While trying to think up a course of action for writing this week’s column, I found myself lost in a flurry of other writing projects. One of these involved answering the simple but incredibly demanding question, “What is America’s most pressing environmental issue?” And because I think this ...
‘Homeless hotspots’ offer hope
March 14, 2012
After spending time working with Redeeming Hope ministries and many of my fellow students on the Running With Hope 5K last year, I feel my radar on homelessness issues has been set to “on” like it never was in the past. This newfound sensitivity is why a recent firestorm of ...
Music still best experienced in person
March 07, 2012
For those of you who don’t know, our local WDVX radio station out of downtown Knoxville hosts what they like to call the Blue Plate Special every weekday at noon. The hour-long live broadcasts feature musicians from all over (though many and sometimes most are local) and are performed ...
Africa deserves more from first world
February 29, 2012
While surfing through world news online earlier this week, I happened to stumble upon a “breaking news” report that had been published just an hour before I found it — the piece, “Ship’s anchor slows down East African web connection,” caught my eye for a few reasons, not the least ...
Remember meaning behind ‘Centaur’
February 15, 2012
It all began with the wonderful suggestion that this week I write about cryptozoology, the (pseudo) science of studying as-yet unconfirmed but anecdotally documented species. That suggestion then spurred me to visit Hodges Library, where one of three known centaur skeletons has been on display for about 20 years. In ...
Cryonics challenges human capability
February 08, 2012
It’s almost spring, and if you look around you can see that the world outside is beginning to thaw. Most of the trees still seem pretty barren, and most of the grass is still an unhealthy shade of murk, but the birds have been chirping and a few brave ...
Power exerted over words, not images
February 01, 2012
This week, I’ve got a picture that I’d like to share with you all. It’s a picture of my closet doors, which are currently partly cracked open. They are tall and thin, with highly polished fronts that reflect the light that comes in through the window opposite ...
SOPA/PIPA unable to cure piracy issue
January 25, 2012
If you’re a 20-something Daily Beacon reader (like I know some of you are), you probably can easily recall your first encounter with a computer. My own first memory is of playing on our giant desktop for the first time, using the directional pad to try to navigate my ...
Appreciate sitcoms over time, anytime
January 18, 2012
At the risk of sounding like some crazy Chuck Klosterman devotee, I have to confess that over the past week I managed to watch the entire first season of that ’90s phenomenon known as “Friends” for no reason other than to experience time travel.
But because at some point I ...
Apple gadgets brighten holidays
January 11, 2012
It’s a new semester and a new year, and a few of you may even be new here. But most of you aren’t (and neither am I), so I won’t bother to go into any details about my (previously detailed) distrust of the digital age. Still, it ...
Choose car that protects environment
November 16, 2011
Partisan politics are boring. So boring, in fact, that even though I started to formulate a column based upon the stupidity of a raise taxes/cut taxes dichotomy, I scrapped it almost immediately. When pundits argue on television “news” programs, the idiocy pretty much speaks for itself. So instead I ...
